The Roman Hunt
by Mashiro
Summary: [Hints of future Destiel] Concerning a string of drownings in Minnesota during the cold, cold November of 2008. This is the first part of a planned series, but it also works as a standalone plot. The first part won't have any really tangible romantic developments, aside from some subtle hints, so it can be viewed as just another episode. [Part 1: Complete]
1. Interlude: Pain, pie and parking lots

**The Roman Hunt  
Interlude: Pain, pie and parking lots  
**by Danny (a.k.a. Mashiro)

Supernatural fandom, series, SPOILERS FOR SEASON 4  
EVENTUALLY SLASH: Dean/Castiel

Posted: 2012-11-17

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Hello there!

If this goes according to plan, The Roman Hunt will be a series of chaptered stories and oneshots, interludes, from season 4 to as far as it feels relevant. My ambition is to try and fit the stories in with canon as seamlessly as possible and add to canon, rather than remove from or alter. Like playing with what could have happened between shows and scenes.

Readers looking for a quick slash fix or a feel-good romance might become frustrated or disappointed. Sorry! I don't mean to try and draw things out or make things super-angsty, but I intend to follow the flow I perceive in canon, with ups and downs and some time to get things going. This first part will be especially short on "good stuff", hence 'eventually slash', but bear with me!

Beware of spoilers! This story will be riddled with spoilers if you haven't watched the season that each part is set in (SEASON 4 for now), so be careful. But you shouldn't have to worry about accidentally moving from one part to another, at least not if you read these author's notes when they pop up. I will make sure the transitions are obvious as I can possibly make them.

Also, be aware of the ratings. I will keep things suitable for ffdotnet, but you should still expect violence, bad language and other not-for-kids stuff. Don't go reading if you shouldn't. In case some chapters need to go beyond what I feel comfortable with posting here, I will post a censored version only and the full version somewhere else. You will be notified if this happens and how to find the full version if you are allowed to and want to read it.

I also want to thank my good friend and bro, the awesome Kuma, kumagorochan at deviantArt, for making the cover for this story. Thank you! You are awesome.

And... yes! I think that's it for now. ^^ I hope you will enjoy reading!

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DISCLAIMER: I don't own the rights to the Supernatural series or characters and I make no money writing this. I'm just a fan. This is fan fiction. All OC characters are fictional and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

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**Interlude**

**Pain, pie and parking lots **

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Let's start small. Nothing fancy or dramatic, just two brothers and a car. It's September, 2008, night or early morning, and Sam and Dean Winchester are on the road, going from Pontiac, Illinois to Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

Dean is driving. Sam has been sleeping, but awakes now, shifting and stretching. Blinking and rubbing his eyes.

"Hey," he says.

"Hey," Dean replies.

Sam yawns, then asks:

"Where are we?"

"About forty miles from Des Moines."

Sam shifts again, pulling a semi-scrunched up sandwich wrapper out from under him with a grimace.

"I can take it from here."

"Nah, I'm fine."

"Are you sure? If you want to get some sleep before we get to Bobby's, I'll..."

"I said I'm fine, Sam."

There is a moment of silence and Dean can feel that his brother watching, watching with that look that makes Dean feel utterly, pathetically transparent. Squeezing the steering wheel, he keeps his eyes fixed ahead. Ahead. Focusing on the piece of road illuminated by the headlights.

Eventually Sam sighs.

"Alright," he says.

A road sign materializes from out of the darkness, is illuminated, and flashes past. Dean shifts his hands against the familiar leather.

Fine? He is fine? Sometimes when his eyes are closed, he knows that this is just a dream. No one brought him back and these past two days never happened. Fine?

Dean had hoped that finding out what brought him back and why would bring some clarity to this, would bring some reason, some sense. Would bring something that would make this all believable. What he had been given in that barn was the opposite. A big ass demon, Dean could have handled that, but angels? **God**? Are you serious?

The road runs fast towards him, disappears under him and then it leaves him behind. Focus on the headlights. All else is darkness.

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Still, half an hour later they stop at a gas station and when Dean comes back from the bathroom, Sam is behind the wheel. It's another look now, determined and challenging and Dean rolls his eyes. Of course, Sam knows that there will be no actual fight about it. The passenger door squeaks open, creaks shut and settling into the seat, Dean raises his eye brows. Sam turns the key, the engine starts rumbling and they're off.

Dean tries to keep focusing on the headlights, on the road, on his jumbled thoughts. There should be enough of those to keep anyone awake. Should be, but this is the passenger seat. The darkness falls, and within minutes he's gone.

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Yes. Small is good. Let's keep it small. Just an angel in a parking lot, watching a man dream of Hell. Castiel stands far enough away from the street lamps and neon signs that he would be hidden in the darkness even if he decided to reveal himself. The irregularly flickering light, underneath which the '67 Impala has been parked, is not his doing.

The dreaming started as if on cue when Sam walked off toward the diner. Barely had the car door been given time to creak shut before the first muscles tensed on Dean's face. Now his head is jerking, as irregularly as the light is flickering, and the creases of strain are clearly visible even with the distance between them.

A soft whimpered groan escapes the nightmare and Castiel leaves the darkness. The artificial light crowds in on him from above and around.

There are so many more lights here these days. Only a short while ago, when the sun went down that was the end of light. Man curled into his bed and waited for dawn. Now sunset is scenery in pretty pictures. Man has claimed kingship over light and night with it. What God created does not suit Man anymore.

Castiel had finally managed to speak with Dean only a few hours earlier. Finally. He really had not expected that he would have to use a vessel to communicate with him. The surprises had not ended there however. Castiel had been shot, stabbed and would have been bashed over the head too, if he hadn't decided then that enough was enough. It should also be noted that the stabbing and the attempted bashing over the head both occurred after Castiel had revealed that he was the one who had brought Dean back from Hell. Really, the man was unruly, distrustful and ill-mannered and... Well. Dealing with Dean was quite a leap from dealing with his vessel.

The shoes scrape against the asphalt and Castiel's shadow brings darkness to Dean's face. The man is still now; his forehead resting on the window frame but the tension is obvious. A thin sheen of sweat over his features and eyes flicking left and right behind closed eyelids. He is still dreaming. Another soft sound escapes, this one too weak to cross the barrier between groan and sigh. The closed eyes squeeze tighter and a tiny droplet of liquid comes free.

Castiel watches it trickle, following the nose, getting stuck for a moment before making its way down to settle on the lip. And he thinks about what Dean had said without words when they spoke. He did not deserve to be saved.

Unruly, distrustful and ill-mannered, still...

Castiel reaches out and steals away the droplet with his thumb. At the touch Dean wrinkles his nose, shifts and seems for a moment distracted from the visions haunting him. His chest heaves a shuddered sigh, but he does not wake. Castiel studies the gleam now on his skin, turning the thumb and holding it to the light.

A bell jingles on the other side of the parking lot and coming out of the diner again is Sam. The door falls shut behind him with a clatter. He clears his throat and coughs, crossing painted empty squares in a half-jog.

The car door does wake Dean. With a flinch he straightens and breathes in hard through his nose. Blinks and wipes quickly at his eyes.

"Hey," Sam says, smiling.

"Hey."

"Thought you didn't need any sleep."

"Shut up."

Sam chuckles and drops a bag in Dean's lap. The older brother sniffs and the paper crinkles as he opens.

"Dude, is that pie?"

"Best one for miles, apparently."

"Night pie... I missed night pie."

The younger brother turns the key and the engine starts rumbling. Castiel has to take a step back to avoid getting bumped, as the vehicle turns to make its way back onto the road.

Into the darkness they go, headlights showing the way. Smaller and smaller the lights become and the rumbling grows softer and softer, until all that remains is the humming and flickering of the bulb over Castiel's head, and the empty parking lot.

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	2. Pull my silver strings, Baby 01

**The Roman Hunt  
part 1: Pull my silver strings, Baby  
**by Danny (a.k.a. Mashiro)

Supernatural fandom, series, SPOILERS for season 4  
EVENTUALLY SLASH: Dean/Castiel

Posted: 2012-11-23

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Thank you for reading!

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DISCLAIMER: I don't own the rights to the Supernatural series or characters and I make no money writing this. I'm just a fan. This is fan fiction. All OC characters are also fictional and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

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**Chapter 1**

**How Elin Ostrand met the horse, and other misfortunes**

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Elin Ostrand is twelve years old and lives in Cambridge, Minnesota. She is a quite normal girl with a quite normal life. She lives in a house on the east side of the river with her mom and dad (Melanie, middle-school teacher, and Owe, engineer) and her little brother, Patrik. Patrik is mostly really annoying, but he does make her hot chocolate sometimes, without her even having to ask. Elin likes school, actually, but would never admit it, because honestly, what kind of a person likes school? Elin loves horses, God, and she thinks that Twilight is stupid.

It's November the 7th, 2008, and Elin is crossing the Rum River, which runs through Cambridge. The snow creaks under her boots and her breath comes in puffs. She is going to her friend Amanda's house. They don't live too far from each other, really. If Elin was a bird, she would have been able to go visit her friend a lot more. Unfortunately she's not and Amanda lives on the other side of the river. Usually Elin can only visit her friend when her mom or dad, or Amanda's mom or dad, can drive her. Now, however, the river is frozen.

It's all everyone talks about in Cambridge these days, how early the river froze this year. That and global warming. Because apparently, global warming is the cause of unusually cold weather, odd as it may sound. At least that's what their home room teacher, Mr. Smith, keeps saying. To be honest, Elin doesn't really care; she's just happy that she can go visit Amanda without having to rely on parents.

She doesn't walk straight from one side to the other, but follows the river south for a bit. It saves her having to do it in the woods or along the road later. It's easier to walk on the snow-covered ice. The river resembles very much a road in the winter. An avenue, with snow-clad trees growing thick on each side and the snowy banks as a low, white hedge at their feet. On days when the sun is out, the avenue will glisten and sparkle and be so beautiful that it would compare to a piece of Heaven surely, or so Elin is convinced.

Today it's cloudy, and it's afternoon. There will still be light for a few hours yet, but you can sense a change in the quality of it. There is a sleepiness to the light, that rhymes with the season.

When she is almost at the place where she will turn right and make her way up the river bank, Elin hears a noise and sees something moving in the corner of her eye. She stops and turns in time to see a gathering of snow flump down from a branch. She frowns. The bared limb waves at her slowly from the eastern bank. What was that? It hadn't been a shape really; nothing she could place, just a... a movement and a sense of something. And that sound. It had sounded just a like a horse snorting. But there is no horse. The snow lies white and still, except for the branch waving slowly, beckoning.

Curiosity tugs at Elin. She takes a step towards the branch, and another. She just needs to…

"Elin!"

Elin jumps and turns, but when she sees Amanda waving, she quickly recovers and waves back with a grin.

"Hi!"

She casts a final glance back toward the branch, but it has lost its charm now. She runs over the snow and hurries up the bank to meet her friend, and the moment is fast forgotten.

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The clouds thin out and scatter as evening falls. Above the white winter landscape a million stars come out to twinkle in bright contrast to the deep darkness of the sky. They almost challenge the moon, they are so bright.

It never really gets dark when the world is covered in snow and Elin has no trouble following her own footsteps back through the woods, down the river bank and onto the ice. But it's colder now. She has pulled her fingers into the palm of the gloves and is rubbing them together, wishing she had listened to her mom and taken the woolly mittens that Grandma made for her and gave her last Christmas. Elin walks fast. The snow creaks.

It is really beautiful though, with the stars and the moon above and the snow glistening around her. This also, surely, would compare to a piece of Heaven, she thinks, raising her head toward the sky.

And that's when she hears the horse again.

Elin is absolutely sure that it was not there before, but when she lowers her eyes, a horse is standing in the middle of the river avenue. She throws a gloved hand over her mouth to cover a gasp of surprise.

The animal is tall and majestic and as silvery white as the world around it. Its mane runs thick down its neck and its tail gathers in a pool on the snow. It stands perfectly still, looking right at Elin with dark eyes through silver forelock. She can hear a deep breath from its lungs and see the white spill out into the air.

Elin smiles. There is a soaring of joy in her chest as she slowly begins to walk toward the horse. She whispers gently:

"Hey, boy... Where did you come from? You're so beautiful... What are you doing out here?"

She's never seen a more beautiful horse. He looks like he's been stolen from one of the posters you get from the horse magazines; a real fairy tale horse. He doesn't move an inch when Elin approaches, when she dares to stretch out her hand, glove pulled off, and touch her fingers to his shoulder. He is warm. Soft and warm and she can see his chest heave to his deep, slow breathing.

"Who are you, boy?"

He lowers his head a little and with a low, rumbling sound, he turns to her. Her smile grows.

"Hey there..."

The muzzle is soft against her hand. And their eyes meet.

When the horse starts walking toward the river bank, Elin understands. She knows what he wants, and she wants it too. She walks with him, her hand on his warm shoulder. He stops beside a snow-covered rock and she climbs up on it, keeping her balance holding on to him. His back is broad, she can see from up here. It will be very comfortable. Perfect.

There is a fraction of a moment when Elin comes back to herself. She realizes what she's doing, what she's going to let him do, and during that fraction of a moment fear surges through her, colder than the snow and the ice below, and she wants to scream.

Then his neck arches and it's gone. Elin Ostrand wraps her hand in the mane and leaps onto his back.

A ways away, on the snowy banks among the trees, an old woman stands. When the horse starts moving, carrying the girl away, she covers her face with her hands and sobs.

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Thirteen days later and a thousand miles away, the angel Castiel is moving through a mountain forest of Glacier National Park, Montana. It is a winter world, with a thick layer of snow clinging to the trees and blanketing the ground, creeping up high against the trunks of fir and pine. A clear blue sky, sun sending its rays down to paint the white with sparkles, and the quiet; not a sound can be heard.

Castiel is moving north, his destination a clearing where he fears the snow will be much scarcer than here. He has been there before; remembers it being particularly beautiful, with brighter light and louder song of birds. It is a special, holy place; chosen by God. And now they say it is under attack, and Castiel can't understand, because they saved this place. This place had been saved.

A red stain in the snow below one of the fir trunks draws his attention. Kneeling, he touches his fingers to the red and watches it melt around his skin to a pinkish liquid. He smells it, but doesn't have to. It is blood. He follows the red trail up the trunk until he finds the spot, like a hole in the bark. Upon his touch, a new drop of blood emerges, oozing from deep within the tree. His brow furrowed, Castiel looks up, the sky piercing blue against the white forest ceiling.

He discovers four more bleeding trees before he reaches the clearing and their fears are confirmed. Here, melting snow drips from bare needled fingers in a pitter-patter soundtrack, foreboding, and amplified each time more snow falls from the trees. Castiel stands amidst dark flecks of uncovered earth and a warm breeze whispers against his face. Winter has been chased from this place.

Hoarse laughter suddenly cuts through the clearing and Castiel turns, spotting the demon instantly. It sits in the body of a human woman, propped up against a pine in a dark red pool, with torn and bloodied stumps all that's left of her limbs. Choking on the laughter, the demon starts coughing, sending more blood to stain the ground. When the breathing evens out, the woman's lips are curved into a smile.

"You will be too late," the demon wheezes out.

The angel moves forward, his eyes dark, and instinctively the demon cowers. It starts coughing again, the body swaying so badly that it almost falls over. But the chest stops convulsing and the demon looks up, its fear spiced with defiance and triumph, growling:

"Go ahead. You will still lose here."

In a last act of contempt the demon directs the body to reveal a row of bloodstained teeth.

"You're going to lose them all!"

Then it screams, unearthly, as Castiel sears the blinding light into its hiding place and casts it from the world. The body slumps, falling to the snow in a splatter of white and red.

Castiel stands, turning. He is surrounded by the ceaseless chant of spring.

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Sam and Dean Winchester are 20 miles from Saint Louis, Missouri, driving south along Interstate 55, when Sam's pocket starts ringing. He shifts the drinks in his lap and fishes out the phone, checking the display before answering.

"Hey, Bobby," he says. "Yeah. Yeah."

He glances at Dean, who's looking at him. Sam frowns and Dean shrugs, turning back to the road. Bobby asks if they're working a job.

"Yeah, we're on our way," Sam replies. "Possible haunting outside of Dallas. Yeah, that one. No, we're..." He looks out the window as a sign flies by. "...not far from Saint Louis, why?"

As Bobby explains Dean looks again, frowning, mouthing 'What?' Sam frowns back, shaking his head then goes back to listening.

"Yeah," he says eventually. "Alright. Yeah. Thanks, Bobby."

Giving a small smile he says:

"Right. I'll tell him."

Then he hangs up.

"What?" Dean wants to know. "What's going on? Tell me what?"

"Bobby got a call about some weird corpse activity."

"Corpse activity?"

"Yeah."

"As in... what? Zombies?"

"Weirder," Sam says. "There has been a recent string of drownings and the bodies, apparently, are crying."

"Crying?" Dean raises his brows. "As in actual tears?"

"Yeah."

"Huh. That is weird. Where?"

"Cambridge, Minnesota."

Dean frowns.

"Hey, why does that sound familiar?"

Sam shrugs.

"He wanted me to tell you that town has the highest percentage of Swedish Americans in the country."

Dean looks at him, an unmistakable spark of attention in his eyes.

"Really?"

"Yep."

A moment passes, then Dean smiles.

"Crying bodies, huh? That's gotta be interesting. What about Dallas?"

"Bobby's just finishing up a job in Shreveport, so he said he'd swing by to look at that house."

"You mean that ghost," Dean says.

"I mean that possible haunting," Sam says.

They haven't been in total agreement about whether or not it's an actual job. Dean says it's obviously a ghost, while Sam says it's not obvious at all. Fortunately, Dean is too distracted to start arguing.

"Dude, Swedish Americans..." he says, nodding approvingly. "I told you about that Swedish Exchange student back when..."

"You did," Sam says.

Dean grins, shifting in his seat.

"She was..."

"Yeah, I know."

So instead of continuing south, they turn in Saint Louis and head north again. It's only when they're almost already there that Dean remembers why Cambridge, Minnesota had sounded familiar.

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	3. Pull my silver strings, Baby 02

**The Roman Hunt  
part 1: Pull my silver strings, Baby  
**by Danny (a.k.a. Mashiro)

Supernatural fandom, series, SPOILERS for season 4  
EVENTUALLY SLASH: Dean/Castiel

Posted: 2012-12-01

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Was the Rum River frozen in late November, 2008, because it was unseasonably cold? Probably not. Is there a Joe's Lake Preserve Motel next to a Walmart in Cambridge, Minnesota? I sure hope not, because it was my intention to make it up. If you live in the area and are bothered by any inaccuracies you may find, I apologize, but the story demanded them and I bow to the story.

Oh! And I also want to thank my wonderful beta, raptorkind. Thank you so much!

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DISCLAIMER: I don't own the rights to the Supernatural series or characters and I make no money writing this. I'm just a fan. This is fan fiction. All OC characters are also fictional and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

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**Chapter 2**

**What ails the dead in cold November**

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On the afternoon of the next day, November the 21st, Dean Winchester is greeting Cambridge, Minnesota with an involuntary shiver and an incredulous face.

"Really, Sam?"

"It's a job, Dean," Sam says, pulling his jacket closer around him. "People don't stop dying because it drops below zero."

"Yeah, well, they should," Dean mutters. "I told you we should have kept the Dallas job."

Sam sighs.

"That was our job!" Dean exclaims. "A warm job!"

He's been frustrated about the job switch ever since he remembered that Cambridge was having one of the coldest Novembers on record. He'd seen it on the news. They could have been in Texas! But no, they'll be freezing their asses off here instead.

Of course, Sam doesn't seem to mind at all.

"Dude, this is not Alaska," he says.

"Are you sure?"

Sam sighs again and rolls his eyes.

They leave the parking lot by a narrow trail that goes half over and half through a snow bank built up by several rounds of snow plowing. On the way down, Dean slips on a particularly icy patch, grabbing Sam's arm to stay on his feet.

"Son of a...!"

"Dean. Calm down."

Grumbling, Dean glares over his shoulder. He decides that the ice looks suspiciously amused.

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The Joe's Lake Preserve Motel can be found at the junction of State Highways 65 and 95, between a Walmart and a Cartridge World. On the outside it looks normal, but the inside has been decorated according to the philosophy of picking a theme and taking it too far. With the timber together with the large beams together with the checkered curtains together with the heavy log furniture and the utter lack of paint, it is the caricature of an overgrown log cabin.

To complete the picture, a bearded man in a checkered red shirt stands behind the counter in the reception area, cheerfully grinning.

"Hello, sirs! Welcome to Cambridge and Joe's Lake Preserve Motel! What can I...?"

Unfortunately, there is no way to hear the rest of what he's saying. Snorting in amusement, Dean jabs an elbow in Sam's ribs.

"Dude..."

On the stretch of wall above the counter, the large head of a moose has been mounted. Antlers stretch far out from each side, black, vacant eyes look down on them and... Either something went very wrong during the mounting or someone had a sense of humor, because the mouth of the animal has been curved, leaving it with a distinct smile.

Sam winces.

"Okay, that's disturbing."

"Magnificent, isn't he!" the cheerful man says, still grinning. A tag on his shirt says Gustaf Jonason.

"A thing of beauty!" Dean agrees, smiling and glancing up at the head.

"Alces alces alces!"

When Dean frowns, the man laughs.

"Eurasian Elk! My Grandpa brought him back from Sweden. We only get the _andersoni_, the _americana_ and the _shirasi_ over here. Or the _gigas_! I tell you, they are as huge as they say. Do you fellows hunt?"

"Well..." Dean begins, but Sam interrupts.

"Look, we're kind of in a hurry, so if you could just..."

"Of course! Of course."

They get a room with a view of Joe's Lake Preserve, or so Gustaf Jonason claims. Actually, what you really see is a frozen pond. On the other side of the pond is a road and on the other side of the road, is Joe's Lake Preserve. You can see it, sort of, but just barely, and probably only because the trees are bare this time of year.

The interior of the room matches the interior of the rest of the motel: Timber, and more timber. The bed covers and curtains are in a dark red plaid pattern and looks like they came from a Gustaf Jonason's shirt; or the skirt of a schoolgirl outfit. Fortunately, no happy animal heads are gracing the walls.

"How do you do that?" Sam asks, shaking his head. "**Why** would you do that?"

He sets his bag down and starts unpacking the laptop. Dean drops his bag on the floor next to one of the beds and slumps down on it, claiming it.

"No way is that moose not haunted," he says. "Or possessed."

"Well, I wouldn't be surprised."

"I say we make sure before we do anything else." Dean lies down on his back, grinning at the ceiling. "If that thing can't make the dead cry, then I don't know what can."

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Medical examiner Buffy Lowsley is walking down the corridor toward the autopsy suite, the sound of her heels echoing against the walls.

"But I told him no, Don."

Yes, heels. Linda keeps saying that she can't understand how Buffy manages to be in heels all day, every day, saying it both like she's impressed and annoyed, but...

"You know he does that. He asks me and then he asks you if I don't let him. He is playing you."

... really, Linda's just jealous. Buffy can hear it in her voice and see it in those looks she gives her.

"Yes! I've told you."

It's not like they're even that high. She wishes Linda would just get over herself and get a pair too; she obviously wants to. But no, high heels (high?) are not for work, are they? At least not their kind of work.

"No, I've told you. Don, I know what I've told you, okay?"

What is Buffy thinking, going to work in high (**high**?) heels?

"Sure, it's just playing video games **now**, but wait a few years and it will be beer and parties. You're teaching him what works, Don, don't you get that? You're telling him that lying and manipulating is good, because it works. You're teaching him..."

Buffy stops. She sighs and rubs her nose.

"Sorry. I'm sorry, Don, I'm just... Yeah. Okay. I'll be home around five. Okay, love you."

She slips her phone into the coat pocket and sighs. Kids... And husbands!

The room she enters is spacious. A wide stretch of floor separates the wall with the desks from the one with the two stainless steel autopsy stations. One of the stations is empty, the other is not. Buffy takes a clipboard and pulls the cover off the body.

"Hey, was that Don? What were you arguing about?"

Buffy looks up to see Linda hurry past down the corridor and rolls her eyes.

"Nothing, Linda," she says, then mutters. "None of your business."

"Have you read that book yet?" the woman continues, her voice is muffled by the distance and the clatter of whatever she's trying to find in the storage. "Ted and I used to fight all the time, but after I read that book it's been so wonderful. I feel like he really listens now and I really understand what..."

Buffy stops paying attention. Linda has this whiny, grating voice that makes everything she says headache inducing. It doesn't help that it's usually also either rubbish or boring, or both. Buffy shakes her head, turns back to the body.

"Jesus Christ!" She shouts, throwing down the clipboard and Linda comes running.

"What's wrong, Buffy! What...? Ooh... Again huh?"

"Well, obviously!"

Buffy rips a length of paper off the large roll next to the station and starts dabbing at the pale cheeks, wiping the tears away. Dead bodies did not cry. Sometimes perfectly natural liquids could seep from a body, making it seem like it was crying, but it wasn't actually. Dead bodies did not cry.

"This is not natural," she mutters. "What am I supposed to do with this?"

"Don't worry", Linda says and rubs Buffy's shoulder. "I talked to Susan just last night and she had called that man I mentioned. You remember I mentioned that man? The one who helped her with that..."

"Yes, I remember." Unfortunately. Some crazy story about a supposedly possessed chest of drawers, or something. Typical Linda.

"Well, Susan said that he had told her that someone will come and look into this. Soon, she said."

"And what will they do, Linda? What do you think they can do? Exorcise the ghosts from our cooler? Really?"

Linda sniffs.

"There's no need for you to be rude, Buffy. There happens to be more to this world than most people think."

She leaves, an offended shuffling coming from her utterly un-heeled shoes. Buffy sighs.

Dead bodies did not cry, but these were tears, they had checked, re-checked and checked again.

Maybe it was something in the water. Some experimental pesticide that was messing with things. After all, that was one of the things that these misbehaving bodies had in common. The water they drowned in. There was nothing odd about the drownings themselves really. No doubt about the cause of death. The bodies would have gone completely unnoticed, if it hadn't been for the tears.

The officers hadn't been too interested, however. They had asked her some questions, but it had led nowhere. Did Buffy think the crying indicated that the cause of death was something other than drowning? No, they most certainly had drowned. Had Buffy found anything else that suggested something else had been involved? No, she had not. Then what did she expect them to do? Was she sure that it was not just some trouble with the facilities?

She could understand. These were dead bodies and she was the medical examiner. She was the one that was supposed to have the answers here.

Buffy makes a last, gentler dab at the pale cheek.

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"First victim, Elin Ostrand. Disappeared while walking home from a friend's house on the evening of November the 7th. She took a shortcut over the river and went through the ice. They found her two days later, ten miles downstream. On the night between November the 10th and 11th, Carl Jennings was ice fishing on the river when the ice broke under him. Found downstream on the 18th, same day as the last victim, Phillipa Bungard, went missing when she was playing in the backyard, also in the evening."

"Let me guess, the Bungards' closest neighbor is the jolly good neighborhood river of death?"

"It marks the property border. There is a fence, apparently, and the family claims that there is no way Phillipa could have gotten past it alone, but the police report still says accident. She was found the next morning."

"Two days ago?"

"Yeah. So, two weeks and three victims so far. All three are children from the Cambridge area who presumably went through the ice and drowned in the river."

"After dark."

"After dark."

"Yeah, that does sound like a lot for accidental," Dean says. "Plenty of monsters hang out in rivers though. Kelpie? Kappa?"

"Frozen rivers?"

"Well, a vengeful spirit then? Any connection between the kids?"

"Not that I've been able to find so far. We'll have to talk to the families."

And then there are the tears, of course. It was the crying bodies that had brought them here in the first place. But that was hard to fit in anywhere.

"Anyway," Sam sighs. "The official explanation is that the ice is unsafe, so they've closed off the river for now. Hopefully that will keep people away and give us some time to figure out what's doing this."

They're in the city of Anoka, set where the Rum River meets the Mississippi, with a population of about 15,000. They're there because the bodies are there. The medical examiner's office in Anoka serves several of the counties in the area, including Isanti and Cambridge.

As Dean pulls in and parks as close to the curb as the snow banks will let him, fine crystals of snow starts landing on the hood of the car and the windows. Dean leans over the steering wheel to peer out at the sky.

"Are you sure we're not in Alaska?" he growls.

"Dude, it's November! It can come with snow."

"Not in Dallas," Dean mutters.

Sam shakes his head, then something occurs to him and a smile starts playing on his lips.

"You know, if this keeps up, you might have to change the tires."

"What?"

"On the car."

Dean stares at Sam, then he grumbles:

"Alright, that's it. Let's go."

He gets out, cold metal stinging his fingers as he closes the door. Silky-fine snow against his face and his breath a white puff.

"I'm just saying," his brother shouts from the inside, gathering police reports.

"Shut up!"

Fortunately it's Sam who slips on hidden ice this time. There is some justice.

.

It is a building to house dead bodies, yet the reception area is not unlike a living room, with a gathering of cosy-looking chairs and flowers, fluffy rug. Dean gestures to Sam and mouths his disbelief, but clears his throat when a woman in a white coat comes up to greet them.

"You must be the agents," she says. "We spoke on the phone? Dr. Buffy Lowsley, medical examiner."

Her handshake is firm.

"Agent Hedlund," Sam says. "This is Agent Marklund."

"Yes," Dr. Lowsley says, clearing her throat. "Yes, welcome to Ramsey. This way?"

She leads them through corridors. They take an elevator down two levels and have to squeeze past a gathering of children, being given a tour. Dean again mouths disbelief, Dr. Lowsley again interrupts.

"I must say, I was both relieved and surprised when I got your call. I have been trying to get some answers to this since the first body, but no one seemed interested in helping me."

"We've had... a few busy weeks," Dean says.

"Of course. It's just... well... I've just never seen anything like this."

They follow her into the cold storage room and Dr. Lowsley opens one of the hatches and pull a body out.

"I don't know if any of them are doing it now. It comes and goes, but..."

She lifts the cover, revealing the pale face of a dead young man.

"No. Not here. Oh, do you want to examine all of them?"

"Yes, thank you."

She leaves the body uncovered and goes to open another hatch, pulls out another body and lifts the cover.

"Ah, yes, here we go."

She takes a step back and puts her hands to her sides. Sam and Dean move closer. It's one of the girls, the older. She is dead, obviously. Her skin is pale and her eyes are closed. The movement looks horribly out of place. Two glittering trails, from her eyes and down her cheeks.

"And yes," Dr. Lowsley says. "We have triple-checked. Those are actual tears."

A too cheerful signal starts ringing and she pulls a cell phone from her coat, checking the display. She indicates where the third body is, tells them to take their time and find her when they're done, or if they need something else. Dean says sure and thanks and she leaves, phone to her ear, saying: Don?

"So," Dean says and straightens when they're alone. "Aside from haunted moose heads, what do we know that makes the dead cry?"

.

.


	4. Pull my silver strings, Baby 03

**The Roman Hunt  
part 1: Pull my silver strings, Baby  
**by Danny (a.k.a. Mashiro)

Supernatural fandom, series, SPOILERS for season 4  
EVENTUALLY SLASH: Dean/Castiel (eventually)

Posted: 2012-12-07

.

I thought I should mention that the "Roman" in the story title does not refer to the season 7 character, but to ancient Rome, and particularly a certain aspect of ancient Rome.

And as for this chapter's title, I always felt that that Ellie song was for Sam and Dean.

Many thanks to my lovely beta, raptorkind!

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DISCLAIMER: I don't own the rights to the Supernatural series or characters and I make no money writing this. I'm just a fan. This is fan fiction. All OC characters are fictional and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

.

.

**Chapter 3**

**Guns and four-legged sons of bitches**

.

.

Sam is holding up a long, fine strand of silver hair. They're on their way back to Cambridge and a swirly white world of winter and snow is passing by outside. There is no sun, but the hair still manages to shimmer as it slowly spins from his grip.

The strand of hair was the last of three interesting things they had found in Anoka. The first had been, obviously, the tears, but they had already known about that. The second thing had been the markings on the victims' arms; thin lines running around the limbs, not in equal strength or the same pattern exactly, but similar enough. Like rope burns, only with thin, thin ropes. When they asked Dr. Lowsley about them, she said that she had noticed them, but accounted them to the struggle the children must have made while going through the ice, or in the water.

And then there had been the strand of hair. Sam had found it tangled in the first girl, Elin's, hair and Dr. Lowsley, after a quick examination, had stated that it most likely was horse hair. Not surprising, she had said. The friend Elin had been visiting when she disappeared had horses and the girl was very fond of them. This was not unreasonable, of course, but...

Sam puts the strand of hair away and picks up the police reports again, flipping through the pages.

"I've been thinking about something," he says finally. "The kids drowned in the river, right? Elin was crossing it when she walked home, Phillipa lived next to it and Carl was ice fishing."

"Right."

"But get this; in none of the reports does it say where they went through the ice, not even approximately. If these drownings are supposed to be because of thin ice, don't you think that they'd want to note where it happened?"

"...Yeah. I guess."

"Dean, with this much snow, you should be able to tell exactly. I checked the weather reports; it was not snowing nearly enough when any of the kids disappeared to cover up their tracks."

"...So where are the holes in the ice?" Dean mumbles, seeing the point.

"Exactly. What if there aren't any?"

"The kids were never actually in the river when they drowned? Hm. It wouldn't be the first time we've seen that. That does sound like a vengeful spirit?"

"Maybe. But it doesn't explain why they were found so far downstream. Or the tears."

"Well, we don't know what kind of spirit this is. It could make perfect sense."

"I don't know." Sam sighs. "There's something weird about this. I'm gonna call Bobby."

Dean grunts in agreement. Outside the world is getting darker.

.

Darkness comes early in winter. It's hard to say where it comes from; it just seeps into the world and before you know it, you can't see the lines on your hands.

But there are artificial lights; in the windows, on signs above stores and there are headlights and street lights. If you squat down in front of your car and hold your hands out to the light, you can see every detail.

If you had been standing on the State Highway 95 bridge in Cambridge on the evening of November the 21st, around 11pm, you would have seen a soft shimmer coming from the Rum River on the south side. If your curiosity had been sparked and you had leaned over the low railing to get a better look, you would at first have seen nothing. You would have squinted, leaned over further and looked this way and that to try and spot that shimmer again. And eventually, you do.

You would see a thin mist slowly rise from the ice, swirling gently. Around and inside it the shimmer would return and seem to settle. Soon it would to take a shape, swirling and swirling, and growing, and it does something to your eyes. It brings tears to them, blurring your vision; you would have to blink, and blink again.

You rub at your eyes and when you look again the mist is gone; the shimmer is gone. In its place stands a horse. In the middle of the river, right below you, it stands. If you had taken a leap over the railing, you would have landed on its back. And you want to. You want to. You...

The horse turns its head and from under a swirl of silver hair dark eyes look at you. For a long, long time, they look at you.

.

For as long as Terry Lowsley can remember, Arthur has been kind of picking on him. Because of his hair, because of his jacket, because of his shoes, because he was sort of friends with Anne, because of his laughter. If he had told Arthur this, Arthur wouldn't have understood. Him picking on Terry? They were friends! How could you pick on your friends? he would have said, only with more bad language.

Arthur can be nice sometimes though, and funny. And spending time with Arthur is better than being alone, so when the boy comes over and bangs on the door, yelling for Terry to come out, Terry almost always comes out. And when mom asks why he would want to spend time with "that bully of a kid who's nothing but trouble", Terry always tells her to stop saying things like that about his friend.

So on the night between November the 21st and the 22nd, when Terry wakes from pebbles hitting his window with a tap, tap sound, he slips out from under the covers, shivering in the cold, and shuffles over to the window.

"Hey, fatty! Will you wake up this year!"

Arthur is standing below the window, knee-deep in snow. Terry bites his lip, throws a glance at his warm bed, then reaches for his pants.

Ten minutes later, they are hurrying down toward the river. Arthur keeps slipping, his worn summer shoes not made for icy winter. He's on Terry's phone:

"If you don't wait for us, I'm going to kick your ass tomorrow, Kellerman, I swear!"

With a snarl he jabs the red button and stuffs the phone into his pocket.

"Hurry up, fatty! You're going to ruin everything!"

Terry tries to run faster, panting, lungs burning with cold air and strain. Not that Arthur is going much faster, with the way he keeps slipping, but Terry doesn't say anything. Under his coat, sweat is running down his back.

Together they stumble the last bit down the river bank and arrive. Kellerman and his brother have waited. They are seated on the bikes, the engines already running.

"Come on!" Kellerman shouts.

Arthur climbs up behind him and Terry gets the brother. What's his name? Steven? Stanley? He's two years older and Terry has only seen him from a distance before, at school.

"Hold on," Steven/Stanley growls. "I won't stop if you fall off."

Terry grips Kellerman the elder's thick jacket, closing his eyes and panting hard. Then the engines scream, snow flies and they're off.

The cold wind is biting. Terry's fingers soon go numb inside his gloves. The sweat on his back turns cold, cold, and he thinks about pneumonia and mom would be so angry if she found out. Kellerman the elder is warm though and Terry tries to focus on the parts of his body that are pressed against him. And it is kind of exciting. Dangerous and forbidden and... Terry shifts his hands and turns his head and sees Arthur. His friend's thin summer jacket has opened, like it often does, and is flying in the cold wind. Arthur's hands are buried deep into Kellerman's thick parka and there is misery on his face. Then he opens his eyes and sees Terry watching him and his misery turns to a grin. He frees a hand and gives a thumbs up.

They're off to see Arthur's girlfriend. Or, well, the girl he says will be his girlfriend when he lets her know she can be. She's the hottest thing on legs, Arthur has said many times. And she'll do anything! She's so great. He met her three weeks ago at a party, but she was from Cambridge and just there for the weekend to visit her cousin. Arthur took the bus to see her a couple of times afterwards, but it's been a while now since he went, over a week. He's going to surprise her tonight, and let her know she can be his girlfriend. She lives just by the river and she loves bikes. She's going to be so surprised.

Terry hadn't been sure he wanted to go when Arthur first told him about his plan. At least not like this. The river has been closed off around Cambridge because the ice is unstable. Three kids have gone through it and drowned so far. But Arthur had said that that was the whole point. You should show girls that you cared about them, even if you don't have to, when they are already in love with you. It was a nice thing to do. And what would show someone that you cared about them more, than risking your life to see them? Or, at least, making them think you risked your life to see them, because everyone knew that story about the ice being thin was just bullshit. You're not scared, are you? Arthur had teased. Are you? Are you scared?

Terry was a little scared. He wasn't sure he believed it was just bullshit, about the ice. Those kids had drowned, hadn't they? But he had agreed eventually. Arthur could have gone alone, but he wanted Terry to come along. Terry didn't want to be a bad friend.

After a series of sharp turns just after Isanti, the river runs fairly straight for about three miles, before it turns sharply again to avoid Cambridge City Park. They have put about half of those miles behind them and are about level with Edgewood, when Terry feels himself being pressed even close to Kellerman the elder, as the bike suddenly slows down. It comes to a stop and Terry sees the other bike has stopped as well.

"The fuck!" Arthur calls over the still running engines. "What are you doing, you son of a...!"

But his words fall silent. He sees. Terry sees also and he knows without knowing that the Kellerman brothers see as well. There is a horse on the ice.

.

Dean can't really feel his toes, just barely, if he wiggles them. He is slowly rubbing his hands together, pressing his fingers together. It has stopped snowing, for the moment, and the temperature has dropped. The air is biting. Breath colors it white.

"Anything?" Dean calls. A moment later, Sam appears from behind a thick tree.

"Nothing," he says and starts to slowly make his way back, snow up to his knees.

Dean looks up toward the sky. A thin sliver of sky has been uncovered and a gathering of stars twinkle desperately against the blackness. Rubbing his fingers. Air colored white.

When they got back from Anoka, they had added the puzzle pieces that examining the bodies had given them to the pile they already had and rechecked the lore on the most plausible monsters. So far, some kind of river monster or a vengeful spirit seemed most likely, but both theories had flaws.

That they hadn't found any old drowning that could be the source yet didn't mean much; it wouldn't be the first time that the death from which a vengeful spirit originated was shrouded in mystery. They also hadn't had time to talk to the families, so there could be a connection between them. It was odd however, that the bodies had been found so far away from where the victims disappeared.

A lot of the circumstances surrounding these deaths also pointed to a monster inhabiting the river. There were many stories from Scandinavia and other parts of northern Europe about wily horse creatures that inhabited rivers or lakes. They lured victims onto their backs and carried them into their river, or lake, and drowned them. With the high concentration of Swedish-Americans in Cambridge, it seemed plausible. Unfortunately, these creatures were more or less actual physical creatures. They used supernatural abilities to charm their victims, but when they drowned them it was just regular water doing what regular water does when it gets into lungs built for air. It clashed with the river being frozen and no holes in the ice.

And of course, neither explained the crying bodies. Bobby had said that he would make some more calls and see what he could dig up. Sam and Dean had done the only thing they reasonably could do at this time of day, or night: patrol the river. Whatever was doing this, it did seem to come out with the darkness. Maybe they'd get lucky.

Sam takes a last stride out of the deep snow back onto the trail and stomps the white off the legs of his jeans. They start walking again, creaking under their feet. There is no moon out, but the snow keeps the landscape from full darkness, and they have flashlights obviously, flashlights. Bright rays of full visibility.

They are not far from where the last girl, Phillipa Bungard, had been found, when Dean suddenly stops, raising a hand. Sam frowns and stops with him.

The sound of the engines is faint at first, but clear, with the night lacking other sounds. And it grows stronger. It's obviously coming from further downstream on the river. Sam sighs.

"So much for hoping that closing off the river would keep people away."

"Since when are people smart," Dean mutters. "They're coming this way."

They leave the trail and walk out onto the ice. The river runs straight here and the lights from the vehicles can be seen, small spots flitting about in the darkness further south. Dean gives a wave with his flashlights, hoping to catch the bikers' attention while there is still distance between them. The reaction is much faster than he had anticipated, however; the sound of the engines almost immediately changing characters. The lights stop moving.

"That was easy," Dean says, frowning.

"Too easy," Sam says.

They don't have to look at each other to know that they share the same bad feeling.

.

Terry can hear the engines running. He can hear them. He can hear them. They sound so far away.

He can't feel the cold anymore. He will never be cold again; he can feel himself smiling. He looks to his left and Arthur is there and Terry can see that Arthur has never been happier. Arthur is smiling, stroking the horse's neck, burying his hands in the mane, burying his face in the mane. Disappearing in the mane.

Kellerman the elder is already seated and has tangled one of his arms in the long silver strands to stay on. His brother is holding on to the other arm, pushing off against the ground and swinging his leg over the silver back. Next is Terry's turn. He would let Arthur go first, but Arthur is buried in the mane and has never been happier. So up, up Terry goes, Kellerman helps him, and if the lack of cold before had been warm, then the warmth now, radiating from the silver back, surely is the sunniest of summer days. Terry closes his eyes with a sigh of gratitude and leans closer to the boy in front of him. He can feel their hearts beating, together; a slow, soothing rhythm.

Arthur is still buried in the mane. Come on, Terry wants to say. We have to go now, come on. But inside his mind a whisper whispers to give Arthur some time. He has never been happier. Give him some time. Yes, Terry supposes. There is no hurry. No hurry. He smiles.

It's like being wrapped in warm, soft cotton, like waking up in a warm, warm bed and it's the weekend and you can stay there for as long as you like. Like sitting wrapped in a blanket in front of the fireplace and the flames are dancing and mom comes with a cup of steaming hot chocolate. It's like... Arthur emerges. His eyes are teared up, cheeks streamed with glistening trails, but his smile is still wide. His hand runs again over the neck and he sniffles, sighing shakily. He looks up at Terry and has never been happier. He's ready now.

Terry takes his hand and he's just about to pull, when a deep shudder runs through the silver back. Into the cotton-wrapped bliss that is Terry's mind, pierces a sharp shard of terror. He twists around and his eyes have time to register the man before his ears register the call.

"Hey! You let them go, you God damned four-legged son of a bitch."

.

Dean doesn't have too much experience with horses. A couple of the girls he's gone out with have been into them and he's been on jobs at farms with horses, but nothing really beyond that. Still he believes that he can safely assume that this horse here is a big one. Its back would be about level with his ears, Dean guesses, and it's broad and muscular.

There is something off with the horse though, Dean realizes as he looks at it. Even with his limited actual experience, he's seen plenty of horses in movies to know what their proportions are supposed to be like, and this one looks weird somehow. It looks... too long.

Dean remembers something from their research. The back of the Scandinavian brook horse could grow to accommodate more riders. He shudders, without really knowing why, steadying the gun in his hand.

Something else that Dean had remembered when he saw the horse was God. According to some of the brook horse legends, the mentioning of God would dispel the horse's power. No luck there though. The creature had not even flinched when he called out to it. Not that he was surprised. When legends claimed that God or God related words or items could protect against creatures like this, it was usually more about the religious and political climate of the time than the creatures. You're afraid of this? No fear, God can save you. You're afraid of that? No fear. God can save you.

Two motorbikes lie in the snow, casting lights on the scene, engines puttering. There are four kids, boys. One is older and the others look to be in their lower teens. Three are seated on the horse's elongated back and one is standing by its head. They are looking at Dean, but there is a blankness to their eyes. They all seem... calm. Too calm. They haven't said a word, or yelled or cried or even looked scared.

"It will be okay," Dean says to them and shifts the gun. "I'll get you home. Just get down and walk away from it."

No reaction. Not a sound, not a movement, nothing in their eyes, just...

You won't use that.

The voice is shrouded and clear at the same time. It comes from inside, from inside Dean and from inside the horse and the children. There is a smoky feel to it that makes Dean's eyes sting and water. He blinks and grimaces.

You won't use that. You don't want to hurt them.

The horse lowers its head, slowly and the boy standing slips his arms around its neck, efficiently shielding it. One of the others, one of the younger, slips down from the back and stretches his arms out to cover the stomach. Dean grits his teeth.

Let it go. Let it go and come with us.

He blinks. Blinks and a tear run down his cheek, leaving a cold, cold trail.

From behind a long, thick stretch of silver forelock, the dark pool of an eye glimmers and Dean swallows. He can hear his heart beating. There is like a murky wind in his ears and for a moment, all he can hear is his heart beating.

Yes.

"No, I don't think so," he growls and raises the gun.

"Hey!"

And Sam is there. As he tosses the chain at the horse, the muffled spell over Dean's mind is gone and the crisp, cold night returns. The horse shrieks angrily and throws back his head, leaping away from the chain with surprising speed for such a big creature. The children fall away from him, yelping and screaming, returned from whatever place he had taken their minds.

As the flurry of silver rushes up the riverbank, Dean fires until it disappears among the trees, gunshots echoing in the night.

.

The night ends with making sure that four shaken and sniffling teenagers get back home. They are from St. Francis, the older boy informs. Not far, at least not by car. Sam and Dean wrap them in blankets and sit them in the backseat of the Impala. They don't have many questions.

What was that thing? The older boy breathlessly asks once and Sam looks at Dean who says: Don't worry about it. You're safe now. Just stay away from the river from now on.

The others don't say much of anything, just curl together, now and then one of them whining: Dad's going to kill me...

"You hit it," Sam says, once the last boy has been seen to his door and they are alone again. "At least five shots. It must be going in and out of corporeal form."

"It was afraid of the chain."

"Yeah," Sam agrees. "It should be vulnerable when it's physically manifested."

Not sure what to expect, they had brought several potential weapons and items of protection. The chain had been steel, another, more plausible, part of the Scandinavian brook horse legends. Steel could be used to trap the horse or block its path.

"It will be more careful next time though," Sam rubs his eyes. "And we'll have to find a way to kill it."

Dean adjusts his grip on the steering wheel.

"At least we know what we're fighting."

"Do we? Dean, there is a reason we weren't sure about these horses."

"Yeah, well. It looked like a horse to me."

It has started to snow again. Small, white specks are swirling in the silver headlights that chase away the darkness from the road.

Dean finds himself almost zoning out, following their swirling with his eyes. It seems to somehow center on the lights, as if drawn to it by some force of nature. Dean adjusts his grip on the steering wheel, and adjusts it again.

"Did... anything happen back there?" Sam asks. "You alright?"

"Yeah," Dean says, clearing his throat and shifting. "Yeah, Sam, I'm fine."

.

.


	5. Pull my silver strings, Baby 04

**The Roman Hunt  
part 1: Pull my silver strings, Baby  
**by Danny (a.k.a. Mashiro)

Supernatural fandom, series, SPOILERS for season 4  
EVENTUALLY SLASH: Dean/Castiel

Posted: 2012-12-15

.

I debated some with myself about how to spell Cas' name, because... Well, I'm used to 'Cass' but I've gotten the feeling that most of the fandom prefers Cas. In the end I decided that I prefer readers not getting annoyed while reading. ^^

Thank you raptorkind for being a lovely beta, and thank YOU for reading!

.

DISCLAIMER: I don't own the rights to the Supernatural series or characters and I make no money writing this. I'm just a fan. This is fan fiction. All OC characters are fictional and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

.

.

**Chapter 4**

**Cracks in the ice**

.

.

The snow is swirling. The sky is starting to brighten, but it's still early and dark. You can't see Joe's Lake Preserve that's supposed to be ahead; it's in the shadows beyond the streetlights. You can only see the frozen, snow-covered pond.

It's Saturday morning, the 22nd of November, and Dean is standing in the darkness, on the snowy bank of the pond and wonders how deep it is. Would he go under completely, if he dropped into it? How thick is the ice? He can't really feel his toes and his fingers are numb.

He had told Sam that he was going to get them something to eat, starving from the night's patrol. Will be right back, he had said. Only something about the swirling of the snow had gotten to him. Had lured him away.

It's not white really, the snow. There is something in the quality of the light in this early morning that makes it sickly yellow. The color squeezes something in Dean's stomach; at the same time as he likes that it makes perfect sense. Something about it feels familiar.

He closes his eyes, memory flashes and he opens them again. Squeezes his hands into fists, then starts rubbing his fingers. He should get going, leave this place. He's hungry. He's been telling himself for a while now.

How thick is that ice?

"Dean."

Dean draws a breath and closes his eyes. For a half moment he keeps them closed. When he looks over his shoulder, he sees the angel framed in lights from the Walmart parking lot and something knots inside his stomach.

He hasn't been anxious, he tells himself. He hasn't been worrying about what their last set of encounters would mean. During the business with Anna, for the first time really, they had been on different sides. But it wasn't as simple as that. Cas didn't equal the angels, not all the way. Cas had doubts, he had said as much himself, and Uriel had hinted at it too, talking about his boss' weakness. When it came to Dean, Cas couldn't be trusted; Uriel had said without saying it. So it wasn't as simple as now they had fought against each other so now they were enemies. Dean was sure that he had seen that in Cas' eyes before the angels left to hunt after Anna. What had happened was them both doing what they had to do. So he hasn't been anxious. They're okay. He hasn't been anxious.

"So, you found Alaska too, huh?" he says. "Why am I not surprised?"

Cas frowns in that genuine way that reminds Dean that jokes aren't part of angel school.

"Dean, we are not in..."

"I know," he says, rolling his eyes and he can feel whatever it was that was knotting in his stomach unknotting. They're okay.

He looks out over the pond again and Cas comes closer, Dean can hear the squeezing of snow under his shoes. The world is so quiet, like the early morning darkness is eating the sound from the cars on the road and the few early-bird shoppers. The swirling snow isn't making any noise either. Just lands on Dean's face with wetness and cold. He sighs.

"So, what kind of a seal is this?" He asks. "Drown enough kids in a frozen river? Make it too damn cold for November?"

Cas is looking up toward the sky. His hair is more disheveled this night; the tie is sloppier and the hem of his trench coat is dark with wetness. He almost looks as bad as Dean feels. Dean gives another, softer sigh.

"What's going on here, Cas?"

A pained look comes over the angel's face. Dean frowns.

"What?"

"This place is not our concern," Cas says then and he looks at Dean with grave eyes. "I am here for you. We need your assistance."

.

A five year old girl is very reluctantly leaving Walmart. Her arms are crossed so tightly over her chest, her eyebrows pushed so far down over her eyes and her mouth in such a pout that it's less like she's scowling and more like the whole girl has been turned into a scowl. She is walking very slowly, ignoring mommy's sighs and frustrated calls.

The girl's name is Jenny and her mommy is the meanest mommy there is. Jenny never gets any ice-cream, she never gets any chocolate or any cookies. It's not fair! Tracy's mommy gets Tracy ice-cream and chocolate and cookies all the time.

"And that's why Tracy will have no teeth left when she grows up," mommy says meanly, and stupidly, when Jenny points out the utter injustice of it all. Of course she won't have any teeth left! No one has any teeth left when they grow up. Otherwise what would be the point of false teeth? Mommy is so stupid and mean.

"Come on, Jenny! Mommy will leave without you if you don't come here right now."

"But I'm coming!" Jenny shouts, being careful not to forget herself and start walking faster.

Her resolve, or rather her attention, breaks as she makes her way through the doors and a group of old ladies come flocking up behind her. Jenny hurries out, feeling in the way and alone, and when she sees mommy holding her hand out to her, the grudge is forgotten and she closes the distance between them in a half-run. Mommy's hand closes around Jenny's.

"I'll make you some nice sandwiches when we get home, okay?"

"Mm."

Mommy's hand feels different through her gloves and Jenny's mittens. Like the windows on the car in the morning before daddy has scraped the ice off; blurry, only with feeling. Jenny can't feel the texture of mommy's hand, only of the inside of her own mittens. She can feel the warmth though, and the firm, comforting grip.

As they pass a row of cars, on the way to theirs, Jenny glances to the left and spots two men, and she frowns. They stand together, near the pond, where daddy sometimes takes Jenny to look at the frog babies in spring. Tadpoles, daddy always says, laughing. Frog babies! Jenny always laughs. Jenny likes frog babies. They have funny tails. But there are no frog babies now, so why is...?

"Mommy," Jenny stops and tugs at mom's hand. "Daddy."

She points to where daddy is standing. Mom looks, but then shushes her.

"Jenny, that's not daddy."

"But..." Jenny protests, still pointing.

"No, that man just has a coat like daddy's, sweetie. Daddy's at home, waiting for us to come back with the milk. Come on now."

Mom says and tugs Jenny along, but Jenny walks the rest of the way looking over her shoulder to where the man with daddy's coat is standing. He looks bright in the early morning darkness.

.

"Are you familiar with the area they call Glacier National Park?"

There are dots of snow in Cas' hair, not yet melted. He seems to be watching some invisible creature on the other side of the pond.

"I guess," Dean says. "Sam and I were on a job once not far from there. You won't get much farther north without crossing into Canada."

"There is a situation there that we believed we had under control," the angel continues. "We do not. The seal that was thought to have been saved is still being threatened. We are hunting the demons responsible, but they are using magic to conceal themselves from us and it's slowing our efforts. We will find them, but we fear that it won't be soon enough."

"You need our help hunting demons?" Dean frowns. It sounds like a joke, but Cas is serious.

"You can find them in time."

He looks at Dean with grave blue eyes, with his messy hair and his sloppy tie, expectant and impatient. Looking deep. It feels like a long time before Dean looks away and squints up at the sky, that is still dark, but not really. Still sickly yellow. Feeling is starting to return to his toes. Closing his eyes, he breathes a sigh.

"No," he says, straightening and facing Cas. "I'm sorry, but we can't. Me and Sam, we got a job here; we have to take care of this. You're going to have to find those demons without us."

Cas looks at him, and such blue, blue eyes he has.

"Look, I get it," Dean continues. "It's a seal, it's important. But so is this. This thing here, it's killed three kids so far and it's not going to stop. We can't leave. You get that, right?"

Cas' forehead is set in a deep frown. He looks into Dean's eyes as if searching for something, needing desperately to find something, though what it is that he needs to find, Dean doesn't know.

"Look... When this is sorted out, when this... thing is hunted down, we'll look into your demons. Alright? But until I know that these people here are safe, I need to stay."

Finally Cas turns his eyes away.

"Alright?" Dean repeats.

"It's a brook horse," Cas says.

For a moment Dean just stares, not expecting that at all.

"It's...? Wait, what? How do you know that? You sure? They're supposed to need open water."

"It's a unique kind, but yes, I'm sure. You are hunting a brook horse."

"What do you mean 'unique'? How do we...?"

But the angel is gone. Dean is left with the swirling snow. The yellowish, sickly light and the half-eaten sounds.

.

On the other side of town, a small hare runs over the highway, causing Mrs. Jones to step hard on the breaks. She curses (something she will apologize to the Lord for later) and the driver in the car behind her curses (he will not apologize), but they are both clever individuals and have made sure that their tires are changed and that they are keeping good distances between them. So Mrs. Jones' car obeys her command obediently and the car behind does the same, and when the mandatory honk of what the hell are you doing, lady, has been delivered, all is well again.

The hare leaps over a snowy ridge and speeds between the trees, leaving the noisy road business behind him. Turning to the right, he makes his way down the river bank, hoping to be home before long. And he will be. His journey will be largely uneventful. The owls are looking in other directions.

Barely a sound does he make as he crosses the snowy landscape. A small, dark and silent shape he would be to a human onlooker, and the owls, as mentioned, are not paying attention. A fox will sniff his tracks a few hours later, but decide that a hunt will be more bother than it's worth. A small, dark and silent shape, following the river between trees and over snowy ridges, away, growing ever smaller and more silent. Behind him, under the bridge over which the cars are yet again running without care, a mist is slowing growing thinner. Soon it will be gone.

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Dean returns to the motel with drinks in one hand and sandwiches in the other, a slice of pie balancing on top of them. The reception area is empty, dead silent and his footsteps give a soft echo. In front of the reception desk he has to stop and peer up at the big, so very wrongly smiling moose head sitting on the wall. The corner of his mouth twitches.

"Dude..." He shakes his head and chuckles.

Sam is sitting at the small table with the laptop when Dean comes back. He doesn't ask what took so long, even though Dean can tell that he noticed. In a way it's almost as frustrating as if he had asked, but what can you say?

The laptop is moved, along with papers and books to make room and Dean sets down the drinks and the sandwiches and the pie, before taking a seat opposite Sam. The sandwich paper is unwrapped. Dean takes a big bite.

"So..." Sam says after a while. "Bobby called back. Apparently that Norwegian hunter he knows has an idea about what this could be."

"Let me guess," Dean says, voice muffled by chewing. "A unique kind of brook horse?"

"Uh... Yeah, actually. How did you know?"

"Cas told me."

"Cas?" Sam shifts, frowning, glancing toward the window. "The angels are here?"

"Yeah. No. I mean... I don't think so. There was some demon, seal business he wanted help with, but not here. And it was just Cas."

"Oh. He wanted help?"

"Yeah. Hunting down demons."

Sam is quiet, frowning. When Dean asks 'what?' he says:

"Isn't that a bit unusual?"

"Unusual?" Dean raises his brow. "I feel like I can't walk two feet without running into angels needing things from me."

"Needing you to hunt demons?"

"Well, why not? What, you think Ruby's the only one who can cook up an anti-angel hex bag?"

Sam thinks about that and eventually he shrugs.

"I guess," he says, without sounding all that convinced. "So, what did you say?"

"What could I say? We already got a job, Sam. I said we'd look into it when we're done here."

Dean has gone back to eating, but Sam is still sitting wrapped in thoughts, still frowning. Dean lets a moment pass, then drops his sandwich back to the table.

"What? You think I should have said yes? Leave these kids here to die while we go save the angels?"

"Of course not."

"Then what?"

They look at each other, until Sam shakes his head.

"Nothing," he says. "You're right, we need to stop this."

"Right. So, let's stop it. What did Bobby say? What do we know about this thing?"

.

It was a local legend from northern Sweden; from an area where a major river met the sea. The area had once been haunted by a brook horse that had bewitched travelers and drowned them in the river.

Brook horses were at the same time easy and difficult to deal with. They were unusually simple to subdue for a monster, if you knew how and could keep your head; but knowing what to do with one afterwards was a different matter. The lore was filled with accounts like, a farmer or a farmhand finds a brook horse grazing on a field near a river or a lake, tames it and then uses it to do farm work. However, the stories always ended with the horse breaking free and running back to its waters, often dragging plough and harness with it and sometimes also its former "master". There was never any mentioning of a brook horse being killed.

This particular Swedish legend spoke of a young boy who had tried. He had waited until the weather was cold enough that the river was about to freeze over, then he had gone in search of the brook horse, to tame it. Taming a brook horse was, as mentioned, quite simple if you knew how: a steel object pierced through its skin would turn the creature completely docile and harmless. The legends mostly spoke of various pins delivered at close range, but the specifics concerning the taming weren't mentioned in this legend.

The boy had harnessed the brook horse, but instead of using it for farm work, he had taken a boat and led it out into the river, to a shallow. He had tied the creature to a pole and then watched for six days and six nights as the river froze around it, trapping it in the ice. When spring came, the brook horse was gone and the boy thought he had succeeded in killing it. But the following winter, the boy encountered the horse again on the ice. Whatever he had done to evade the horse's magic the first time didn't work again. It enchanted him, ordered him up on its back and then leapt through the ice with him, leaving him to drown, trapped in the waters below.

"Apparently instead if killing it, the ice transformed the brook horse," Sam says. "It became 'a creature of cold and sorrow', from then on only appearing when the river was frozen, only going after children and leaving the bodies of its victims weeping."

"Huh," Dean says. " Yeah, I'd say that sounds like our guy."

.

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	6. Pull my silver strings, Baby 05

**The Roman Hunt  
part 1: Pull my silver strings, Baby  
**by Danny (a.k.a. Mashiro)

Supernatural fandom, series, SPOILERS for season 4  
EVENTUALLY SLASH: Dean/Castiel

Posted: 2012-12-21

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This chapter has been censored slightly to better suit the M rating. If you would like and are allowed to read the full version, instructions on how to find it will be on my profile. But even if this chapter is censored, please be careful with it. The scene is still strong.

Thank you so much, raptorkind, for being an awesome beta!

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DISCLAIMER: I don't own the rights to the Supernatural series or characters and I make no money writing this. I'm just a fan. This is fan fiction. All OC characters are fictional and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

.

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**Chapter 5**

**Deliverance**

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Just an angel in a motel room, watching a man wash the sleep off his face. Dean is leaning over the sink and water is running down his arms, shining in the bathroom light. Shining streams down his skin. Droplets are escaping from his elbows, dripping back into swirling water in the sink, landing on the bathroom rug and on Dean's bare feet. The splashing sound echoes.

Dean straightens. His face is blurred by the steam on the mirror, but he runs a wet hand over it and Castiel can see his eyes. He can see Hell. Dean blinks.

Man is young. It seems not long ago that the slimy half-fish creatures that would eventually be Man crawled out of the waters and learned to walk. Not long ago that the hairy, bent half-monkeys learned to stand, took up arms, moved into caves. Man moves fast. Man is reckless and not satisfied; he wants more, better, faster. Rebellious. Man is young.

Now Man stands in front of mirrors. Unmoving he stands with water dripping from his elbows, unmoving, closing his eyes to hide the pain and opening them again when there is no reprieve. Castiel sees no youth in Dean's eyes and that strikes at something within him, bringing pity and frustration, sadness, concern, love and anger, care and...

The muscles on Dean's back are playing in the half-light. He grabs a towel and presses it to his face, hiding eyes and shining wet cheeks.

Then they are calling. Castiel sets one final glance on the suffering man, and leaves.

.

It snows over Reynolds Mountain. Angry, untamed specks of white are swirling, obscuring the land and spiking the air. There is a lonely, haunting whistle from the wind.

The last demon scrambles to get away, directing the human body on all fours through the snow, blood tainting the pure white in spatters with every move. Castiel grabs the back of the head and lifts the body half-off the ground. The demon sends a howl of frantic fear through the human's throat as the light drives it out its invading presence.

The empty body falls limp back to the snow. Within minutes, it has been covered with a thin layer of powdered white, turning red where the blood has stained the clothes and where the wounds are still bleeding. The mangled left arm leaves a pool of red. A stray gust tugs at the blue jacket and a lock of brown hair.

"Dean Winchester will always put his self-interests above the greater good. He has shown that time and again."

Uriel is standing at the edge of the grove, looking out over the snowy mountain landscape. As Castiel stands up and moves toward the nearest of the trees, he turns.

"Or will your monkey prince obey this time?"

Castiel runs his fingers over the carvings in the bark, watching a new drop of blood trail from one of them. Fine red strings form an intricate pattern.

"Dean is fighting other battles," Castiel says finally.

There is a deep, softly rumbling laughter in Uriel's throat as he moves closer. His repugnance is unmistakable.

"Oh, I'm sure," he sneers, but then his voice grows softer. "Castiel. My brother, what will it take for you to see the truth of him?"

It is different, seeing Uriel in a vessel through the eyes of a vessel. With dark, human eyes he looks at Castiel and it does something to perspective. This is not their world. They are not here to protect something of theirs. The thought has crossed Castiel's mind that this is why they need vessels. But he wonders if Uriel would see it that way.

"I have faith in our Father," Castiel says.

Uriel snarls in frustration. Anger flashes in the dark, human eyes and he looks away. For a moment he looks away, before he straightens and folds his hands behind his back.

"We lost a sister while you were wasting time with your precious human," he says. "Camilla is dead."

Cold and angry specks of snow strikes at Castiel's face. He closes his eyes.

.

Torment, in this place, is a physical thing. It is a misshapen, half-eaten creature kept alive, in the distance sobbing and wailing its agony. It is a low, crumpled creature that stumbles at your heels, unevenly, limpingly, shuddering and grunting, its throat long gone but its suffering still bleedingly acute.

A thick, red gathering of screams. Smoke, burning, crowding in on you so close that you forget that there are other things. It seeps into you. You can feel it, crawling its way inside, little by little, gnawing at your senses and your being.

Enduring the scorch of unspeakable fires, Castiel is moving through Hell. It is a place where torment has taken form. So many souls have suffered here, are still suffering here, that their anguish has become a thing, clinging to the ever changing walls. A living, screaming wound, ever scratched and reopened. Castiel is an angel, a warrior, strong and with faith in his Father, but if he stayed here for too long, this place would surely devour him.

He won't. He won't stay. He is almost there now. It is almost done.

The room he finds himself in is not really a room. He can see the walls going in and out of shape, quickly, but without a doubt they are only illusions. The blood staining them is not there; the empty skin dripping red, dark red gaping holes where eyes have been, not there. Not the red skull, the bones and nails or the twitching fingers. The floor, thickly, unevenly carpeted in layers of blood, is flickering too. Only the torment is really here. Though it makes little difference to the souls.

There is a rack in the center of the room and on it a woman lays on her back; long, blonde and bloodstained hair spilling down. It is a woman, Castiel can see; her face is still untouched, blue eyes open wide. The skin that should cover her chest has been peeled off and is hanging off one side. An exposed ribcage gleams white against the red.

The man is at her leg, working meticulously on revealing the bones from heel to hip, one thin slice at a time. The woman is shuddering, muffled screams of anguish being eaten by a wide leather gag.

He stops at the knee. Wiping the blade off, he walks to her head and runs a bloodied hand gently over her cheek.

"How's that feel?" he asks. "Wanna let it out?"

He loosens the fastenings of the gag, uncovers her mouth and she screams, screams and sobs and trails of tears run down over her ears.

"P-please!" she begs. "Please!"

The man watches her beg, unmoved. Unmoved? No... A small smile forms on his lips, creeping up his features to be a glitter in his eyes. As if her torment brings him pleasure. His glittering eyes falls shut and he lets his head fall back. Smile growing.

He covers her mouth again and his hands pressing down hard over the gag, over the now muffled screams; standing for a moment, before letting go. The woman squeezes her eyes shut as he moves back toward her mutilated leg.

There is no struggle and no words exchanged. With an oddly comforting moan the walls of the room crumble and light spills into the darkness. Dean's face is struck by it, full force. He squints, blinks and puts his arm up to protect himself. But it doesn't hurt. It's just bright, just light and he soon realizes, blinking, blinking and lowering the arm.

There is awe in Dean's eyes, when he sees the angel stand before him. He does not move to get away when Castiel puts his hand on him.

.

From a clear blue morning sky, the sun is casting glitter on the snow and it is as if it knows. The days are shorter now, the darkness more dominating, it must make use of the time it is given. So it does. The colors are brilliant and the light was never brighter.

They come around the corner, Sam and Dean Winchester. Dean is grumbling, pulling his jacket closer around him as they cross the parking lot to get to the car. Before getting in, he runs his hand gently over the windows to wipe away the frost patches. Only a few have formed and they come off easily, the sun having loosened them. He wipes off his hand on his jeans.

The doors squeak open and then creak shut. The engine starts rumbling, and soon the car is rolling out from the parking lot, onto the road to join the others.

When it's gone from sight, Castiel looks up at the sun.

.

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	7. Pull my silver strings, Baby 06

**The Roman Hunt  
part 1: Pull my silver strings, Baby  
**by Danny (a.k.a. Mashiro)

Supernatural fandom, series, SPOILERS for season 4  
EVENTUALLY SLASH: Dean/Castiel

Posted: 2013-01-03

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Many thanks to my wonderful beta, raptorkind and thank you, reader, for reading!

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DISCLAIMER: I don't own the rights to the Supernatural series or characters and I make no money writing this. I'm just a fan. This is fan fiction. All OC characters are fictional and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

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**Chapter 6**

**Unfound and broken things**

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Underneath two mops of wild, red hair, green eyes glitter with mirth as Mrs. Torhildsen's two youngest ignore their mother's commands and peek into the living room, to where Sam and Dean have been ushered to sit on the sofa.

"Hannah, James, behave you two!" Mrs. Torhildsen calls from the hallway and the closet where she rummages through boxes and clothes and... other closet things. "I can hear you making trouble in there."

The children giggle, covering their mouths with their hands. The girl, Hannah, screws up her face and sticks her tongue out. Dean narrows his eyes, then makes a face of his own which sends the children's giggling into overload.

"Dude," Sam mutters, sending out an elbow.

"Ow, what?" Dean rubs his side. "She started it."

"Dean, she's five."

"I'm so sorry to have kept you waiting," Mrs. Torhildsen says as she returns to the living room, holding an old wooden box between the tips of her fingers like it was toxic. "Here it is."

"Thank you."

Sam takes the box from her. It's a faded, worn piece that no one has bothered to paint. The surfaces are smooth and the corners rounded.

"My aunt sent it to me for my birthday. She said it was an old jewelry box that belonged to her grandmother, but I don't know." Mrs. Torhildsen shrugs and smiles. "She's that kind of aunt, you know."

"Yeah," Dean smiles back. "Don't we all have one."

Sam smiles too, briefly, as he runs the EMF meter over the box. Giggling, Hannah darts up to her mother, grabbing onto her leg. James hurries after his sister, grabbing onto her. Mrs. Torhildsen shushes them, but strokes their hair and lets them stay.

"What did you say this was again?" she asks, watching the box and the EMF meter with a worried frown on her forehead. "A contagion on the plane? And it could be dangerous?"

"It's probably nothing," Dean says. "We just want to be thorough, Mrs. Torhildsen."

The mother nods, soothingly running her hand over her childrens' heads. Hannah squirms absently against her leg, glittering green eyes never leaving Dean.

.

Of course, the box turns out to be just a regular old box from an aunt of that kind; whatever that kind is. Like all the other items they've checked so far.

When you knew what you were dealing with, at least sort of, you could come up with a plan to... well, deal with it. Or at least get to work on trying without fumbling around in the dark. This wasn't a regular vengeful spirit, or a true brook horse; it was a little of both, they realized. It acted like a brook horse, luring victims and drowning them, but had many of the qualities of a spirit; like being able to manifest and unmanifest physically as it needed to.

As for the kids, while this brook horse spirit clearly held a grudge, it seemed most likely that it went after kids in general, not specific kids. It grabbed whoever it came upon, like a regular brook horse. Because of that, they had decided that talking to the families would be a waste of time.

Instead they had spent that Saturday of the 22nd focusing on why here and why now. That legend had been a local one, speaking of a unique brook horse haunting that one river and that one town in Sweden; not last year either, but a long time ago. So why was it causing trouble here, now?

Brook horses were not known for moving from one river or lake to another; like many similar creatures they were tied to one spot and troubled that area. This wasn't a normal brook horse, however. It had as many spirit qualities as brook horse qualities and spirits, Sam had pointed out, didn't have to be tied to an area.

He had suggested that maybe the brook horse was, or maybe only ever had been, tied to an object. If that object had been shipped over the Atlantic, the creature would have been shipped along with it. That it seemed to haunt the Rum River could have many explanations. If the object had been dumped in or near the river, it could have transferred itself to the waters somehow. Or it could be just using the river as a hunting ground, being still tied to the original object. They didn't know enough about this brook horse to say what it was and wasn't capable of.

So Sam and Dean have spent the morning going through post office logs and the rest of the day visiting Cambridge citizens who received packages from Sweden around the time the first victim disappeared. They have had no luck so far, however. The EMF meter has been silent and all items have been accounted for with nothing mysteriously missing. And now... Dean glances up at the sky. The light has changed; like there is something missing. Darkness is slowly coming closer.

"You know, this is why we can't leave," he says, gesturing back toward the Torhildsen house as they cross the street.

"Old jewelry boxes?"

"The kids! That... probably obnoxious five-year old and her brother, driving their mom crazy. They're what's at stake here. Real, actual kids, not... possible demons that we might find in time to save one seal in the middle of nowhere."

Sam sighs.

"You know it's not that simple, Dean. Yeah, we can save those kids from being drowned by that brook horse, but don't you think they might need saving from the Apocalypse too?"

"No," Dean says. "Not today, they don't. And not tomorrow either, if we don't stay here and stop that thing."

He gets into the car and rubs his fingers. His breath is a puff of white smoke. It feels odd that for once it means something other than ghosts. In one way he likes it, in another, it's endlessly annoying.

"Let's just deal with this now, okay?" Dean says, when Sam opens the door to the passenger side and gets in. "Look, I think I got a plan for tonight."

Of course, Sam won't like it. Hell, Dean doesn't like it, but they need something. They aren't making any progress, and darkness is coming.

.

No, Sam doesn't like it. Sam doesn't like it at all. Dean sees the frustration grow on the other side of the diner table as he explains, until it can be contained no longer.

"I thought you said you were fine."

"I am fine!"

"You just said it **talked** to you, Dean. In your head. How is that fine?"

Dean rolls his eyes.

"It's how it talks, Sam. Just because it talked to me doesn't mean I'm... under its spell."

"Really? How do you know?"

"Well, I haven't been drowned for one. And I'm not a zombie like those kids last night. And even if it was working some kinda mojo on me, you broke the spell, remember? We chased it off. Come on, Sam, can't we just get to how this is a good thing?"

"This is not a good thing, Dean! We don't know nearly enough about this thing to say for sure that you're fine. Or if this plan of yours is going to work."

"Yeah, well, it's what we've got. Unless we can find what brought it here and figure out a way to gank it in less than..." He glances outside and then at the clock on the wall. "...two hours? We're gonna need a plan for tonight. You got a better one?"

Sam sighs. He doesn't, of course. Dean bites off another chunk of his burger.

"I don't like this, Dean."

"Good. 'Cause I don't like it either."

He keeps eating. Reluctantly, Sam starts finishing his salad. Outside the darkness is creeping up on the winter town as evening draws closer.

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Old widow Sandra Patrikson lives on the east side of the river, in a house not far from Wood Duck Preserve. It was her husband's house, she always felt. He had shared it with his first wife and they had raised two children there. When he asked Sandra to marry him, five years had passed since Jane's accident and Sandra shouldn't have felt like an intruder. He never treated her that way, and the children didn't either. They called her mom and loved her and said that she belonged there. But she did feel like an intruder, and the feeling didn't pass like she told herself it would. Not after a year, not after five, or ten. Now her husband has passed and the children are moved out; she lives here alone, but she still feels like a stranger. More often than not, she caves to the feeling and sleeps on the couch.

The house is dark, as the world outside. Only a small lamp in the window spreads soft light in the hallway. Sandra stands by the fireplace in the living room and runs a finger along the frame of her wedding photograph. It's old, the shine of the wood long since faded, but it's smooth and somehow gives her comfort. The picture is in color, but the faded kind that belongs to the past. Her husband is smiling that big smile of his that always went to his eyes. Sandra is smiling too, but not big and she can see the signs of sadness written on her features on the other side of the glass and the many years. No one else saw. She was never a big smiler, so everyone just said she was so beautiful and must have been so happy. Some days Sandra wonders if the signs are just in her head.

Letting her finger drop from the comforting wood, Sandra goes to the door and puts on her coat, her warm gloves and her hat. Stepping outside, she breathes a puff of white into the air and looks up at the sky, clear, this cold, cold night. The waning moon shines brightly, giving a silvery glow to the winter world below, as a million stars twinkle in desperation.

Sandra Patrikson leaves her husband's house, head downcast and her only company the creaking of the snow under her boots.

.

Not terribly far from where old widow Patrikson walks into the night, south of the bridge over Rum River, a hare sits dead still, pressed against a snow-covered, uneven lump of a shrub. It is the very same hare that gave Mrs. Jones a scare on the highway, a day ago.

The hare has a gnawing, awful feeling and that's why he's afraid to move. Something is watching him, he feels. Is it the owls? It is. One of them; but the hare doesn't know. He just knows that it feels awful, and he knows to trust his instincts. He sits dead still.

Still, when the man comes walking, following the frozen river north, other instincts come into play. The shrub stands close to the river bank and the man has watchful eyes, searching eyes, the hare doesn't like it. The urge to flee struggles with the urge to stay as instinct is weighed against instinct and the hare can feel his heart start beating faster.

In a way he knows already. He knows that he is doomed, that he will not live to see the end of this night. A beautiful night it is, with the moon and the stars and silvery snow. He knows.

It takes only seconds from when the hare leaps from his hiding place for the owl to strike down on him.

.

Dean flinches at the flutter of motion to his right, as the large bird lands on its prey. Dark wings flap quietly before they settle and something struggles underneath the bird, kicking in the snow. For a moment the owl looks at Dean, studying him, as if curious. Then its attention shifts and it sends its beak down, hard, yanking a sound from the bundle of prey still fighting in the snow. Dean swallows and then he keeps walking.

Tonight is colder than last night, a day of clear sky having brought the temperature down. Dean walks faster than he usually does, constantly rubbing his fingers against each other and wriggling his toes. The coming of night and darkness had been the looming shadow hanging over him that afternoon, but now that it's here... It's hard to call this darkness. The snow glows in the moon light and shadows are cast, not unlike the shadows of day. There is no need for flashlights. That doesn't mean danger is any less present however.

Dean has been following the frozen river since just after 8 o'clock. First he walked beside it, among the trees on the river bank, to try and avoid drawing unnecessary attention. The river was closed off, after all. When potentially curious eyes grew fewer, as people started returning to their homes for the night, he walked more freely; taking advantage of the smooth frozen surface of the river. He has also started to now and then stop, in more secluded areas, and speak or call out:

I know you're here, he says. I know you're here, I can feel it. You did something to me, didn't you? You wanted me to come with you. I heard you.

Look, I'm not going to hurt you. You know I've got nothing that will hurt you. I just need to see you.

Come on, he says. I was... scared before. But I'm not any more. Please.

In the distance he hears cars, but not always. He hears his boots against the snow. Around him the snow-covered trees on the river bank, hanging from the weight, form a corridor of glowing white. No... Silver.

Dean is close to the bridge, it's just up ahead, when he finally feels that he is no longer alone. It's a prickling feeling in his guts and his skin and his eyes. He squints, turns in the snow to look behind him and turns back again. Nothing but silvery snow and star-speckled sky. A car passes on over the bridge, headlights a beacon, but Dean just barely registers it. The feeling grows stronger.

"Hey," he says. "You there?"

He turns again, slowly, swallowing. As he looks north again towards where the bridge leaps over the river, his eyes suddenly sting and blur. He grimaces and blinks, wipes at his eyes with his jacket sleeve. When his vision clears again, the horse is there.

It seems even larger than Dean remembers; so tall and muscular, but never lumbering. The odd proportions are gone. From its neck pools the thick stream of silver mane and the equally thick fall of tail gathers around its hind legs. Through a long silver forelock, dark eyes gleam. Dean meets them.

Foolish man.

Like last night, the words come from inside, from inside Dean and from inside the horse, but Dean is prepared for the feeling now and blinks quickly and wipes at his eyes as the smoky quality assaults him.

"I've been looking for you," he says.

Foolish man.

"Look, you told me to come with you. Last night, remember? I wanna do that now. I wanna come with you."

There is a hollow sound as the creature lets out a deep, deep breath and the cold air is colored white. For a long time it only looks at Dean, deep into him, under the skin and between bones. It's hard to stay focused under the scrutiny of those eyes. The mind wants to wander to warm things, joyful things, to summer days of lawn mowing and beer.

Dean grabs on to the children. He grabs on to the pale, pale skin of the children locked away behind square hatches, to the terrified eyes of the midnight motorbike rebels from last night, and to Hannah, green eyes glittering with joy.

You are old.

"Hey," Dean gives a strained smile. "Don't you think 'experienced' has a nicer ring to it?"

You are old and full of sorrow. I take no pleasure in broken things.

Dean grits his teeth.

"Come on," he says and takes a step forward. "That's not what you said last night. You said I could come with you."

The horse doesn't move, so Dean dares another step, and another. As he walks slowly forward, his mind wants to wander again to those warm things. To living another life, where night does not mean horrors. Where warm beds comes with darkness, not midnight walks through snow and cold. And sleep does not mean nightmares. How about a normal job? A girl he didn't leave the next day? Kids? He sees Lisa and Ben. He sees breakfasts and barbecues in the backyard with the neighbors.

"Yeah," Dean says. "Yeah, just..."

Sammy. Sammy safe, and happy.

Dean stops. He closes his eyes and Sam is smiling. He's in a suit, in a nice office and it's not just a show for some monster hunting job. It's him. It's his career. His life. Sam comes to visit their old house in Lawrence and mom and dad are there and he's got Jess on his arm and his smile is so genuine and so full of happiness.

For a fraction of a second, Dean lets go of the children. He allows the image of his brother and the life he never got to have come into the deepest corners of him.

He reaches out and as his fingers connect with the soft, silky coat of fur, a warm shudder runs through him, all the way into his soul.

Then the soft whistle of a dart blows through the illusion and the cold winter night is there again. The horse wobbles, taking a shaky step away and Dean awakes, as if from sleep. For a moment he is lost. Then he remembers and he fumbles with the rope he brought, fighting against the still vivid images in his mind.

It seems though, that there is no hurry. After the first shaky step, the horse stands still, dozily, the steel dart from the tranquilizer gun lodged securely in its shoulder.

"Dean!" Sam shouts, running through snow, down the river bank toward them.

"I'm fine, Sam," Dean calls back, swallowing, tightening a hard knot to keep the rope around the horse's neck.

Slowly, the influence of the brook horse is trickling away from him. He wipes at his eyes with his sleeve. He hadn't expected that. He had assumed that the creature would try and ensnare him somehow, if it showed up at all, but he hadn't known how. The images had been so vivid, so... real. He had felt the warmth. His hands are shaking it's so cold, compared to what the brook horse had shown him.

Then Sam is there, tranquilizer gun in hand, panting white clouds from the run.

"Is it...?" He asks.

"Yeah," Dean says. The horse is completely docile, chewing calmly, not moving one inch when he checks that the steel dart is secure. It looks like it worked.

Dean is about to hand the rope over to Sam, when suddenly he spots something on the western side of the river. A figure is moving among the trees. It looks like an old woman, in a thick, long coat. He frowns.

"Hey, do you see that?"

"What?" Sam asks.

"That old..." Dean begins, but as he points the old woman disappears behind snow-covered trees and shrubs. He gives the rope over to Sam and walks toward the river bank, watching the trees, but the woman doesn't appear again. He stops.

"I didn't see anything," Sam says.

Dean watches for a moment longer, before shaking his head.

"Never mind," he says, no longer really sure that someone had been there at all. An old woman wandering around in the middle of the night? "Never mind. Nice shooting." He turns to back to his brother, giving half a weary smile. "You just tamed yourself a brook horse, Sammy."

.

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	8. Pull my silver strings, Baby 07

**The Roman Hunt  
part 1: Pull my silver strings, Baby  
**by Danny (a.k.a. Mashiro)

Supernatural fandom, series, SPOILERS for season 4  
EVENTUALLY SLASH: Dean/Castiel

Posted: 2013-01-20

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Many thanks to my wonderful beta, raptorkind, and many thanks to you, lovely reader, for reading!

.

DISCLAIMER: I don't own the rights to the Supernatural series or characters and I make no money writing this. I'm just a fan. This is fan fiction. All OC characters are fictional and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

.

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**Chapter 7**

**I choose the chains of steel tonight**

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"You sure it's here?"

"I'm... fairly sure it's here. Should be here."

Dean sighs and grumbles, scanning the outside for lights from houses. Or any sign of civilization, really.

"At least it's remote," Sam says. "And it's small. It's what we need."

Dean has to agree with that.

They are following a small road through a thickly wooded area, completely covered in snow. The road has been plowed, but not very recently and there is a substantial layer of snow on the ground. It's a big truck though, outfitted with almost brand new tires suitable for the area and the season. Even with the heavy trailer behind, there is no trouble. Dean would never admit it, even to himself, but he's kind of relieved they didn't have to take Baby out here.

As soon as Dean had managed to get Sam to agree that using him as bait to capture the brook horse was the only decent option they had for the night, they had started making preparations. The tranquilizer gun had been loaded with steel darts without actual tranquilizer (last thing they needed was a huge-ass horse creature passed out on the ice), they had made sure they had enough steel chains to open up a kinky porn club and the truck and the trailer had been rented. When they came to what to do with the brook horse once it had been tamed, they had talked to Mr. Jonason, the motel owner, who had given them the names of several people in the area who owned stables and might be willing to accept a temporary boarder.

It was Dean mostly that had decided on Olstorp Farm. They had wanted a smaller, secluded place with a somewhat comfortable distance to the river, but still not too far away from Cambridge and the motel. Olstorp Farm fit perfectly. And then there was Julia Nilson-Brody, the stable manager that Dean had spoken to on the phone.

He had heard it immediately; she was an attractive woman. Sam had protested, of course, saying something about the girls in the phone sex ads not being the girls you talk to.

"You can't hear what someone looks like," he had said.

"Shut up," Dean had said. "I'm telling you, that was the voice of an attractive woman."

And he had been right. Of course. They eventually find their way out of the snow covered woods and into snow covered farmland and not long after that comes a rickety sign saying Olstorp Farm. Dean makes the right turn and follows a narrow road up to the stable grounds. When the woman comes to greet them, a smile spreads on Dean's face.

"Told you," he says, elbowing Sam.

"Lucky guess."

"That's skill, Sam. Skill. You take the horse, I'll take the girl."

"Whatever. Just give me some time to get the chains off."

"That won't be a problem," Dean says, smiling as he gets out of the car.

Since Sam had hit it with the steel dart the brook horse had been about as much trouble as a sleeping kitten, following whoever held the rope without hesitation. Still, they hadn't wanted to take any chances, so they had fastened several steel chains on and around the creature, in case it tried to break free during the drive. They couldn't very well lead the horse out of the trailer covered in chains, however. Dean did not want to try to explain that to anyone, least of all to the lovely blonde that is approaching.

Julia Nilson-Brody is around thirty, with blue eyes and one gorgeous smile. And a firm handshake, Dean finds out as she takes off her worn stable gloves and takes his hand. Her palm is calloused, speaking of physical work and of a life outside.

"Julia Nilson-Brody," she says, smiling brightly. "But just call me Julia, please. We spoke on the phone?"

"We did," Dean says, meeting her smile with his own. "Agent Dean Marklund. Sorry for dragging you out here in the middle of the night."

"Oh, it's not a problem. I live just up ahead. You find the place okay?"

"Yeah! Like you said, can't miss it," Dean says, nodding. "Thank you for taking us in on such a short notice."

"No, no, I'm happy to help. Though I have to admit, I'm curious as to why the FBI would need a box for a horse."

"Never happened before, huh?" Dean chuckles.

"Never did, no," She laughs. "But... You can't tell me, can you?"

"Sorry. FBI business. Very secret stuff."

Julia says she thought as much, not seeming bothered at all, as if this happened once or twice every week instead of never. She has a box stall prepared in the small barn, where their horse would be the only occupant. You said you wanted him isolated, right? She says and Dean says it will be great. She smiles; yeah, gorgeous smile. He smiles back.

And then Sam opens the door to the trailer, calling:

"We're ready."

"Finally!" Julia calls back. "I can't wait to meet this special horse of yours."

Sam gives a polite smile. Dean chuckles and thinks: if you only knew.

.

Before she leaves, Julia Nilson-Brody gives another one of her smiles, a small wave and says for them to call if there's anything they need. Then they watch the woman get into her car and drive off into the night.

"You wanna bet she's Swedish-American?" Dean says, nodding his head approvingly. "Nilson, that's Swedish, right?"

Sam rolls his eyes and heads back to the small barn, not bothering to reply.

The barn stands a bit away from the main stables; a small pasture separating the two buildings. There are two large box stalls and one smaller, a section where hay bales have been piled and a tiny tack room, where a make-shift bed has been squeezed in. Julia has assured them that it's quite comfortable, but it's so small that Dean probably even couldn't fit in it. Not that they have been planning to stay in the tack room; they want that brook horse where they can see it.

They are greeted by warmth and the smell of hay, and the sound of it being ground between heavy horse jaws. The silver creature raises its head to look at them with gentle eyes, turning its ears forward in friendly horse gesture.

To say that Julia had been stunned when Sam led the horse out of the trailer would be an understatement. The woman had been standing with both her eyes and mouth wide open, whispering "oh my, oh my..." with such awe that, for a moment, Sam thought the dart had come loose and the brook horse had enchanted her. As it turned out, well, it had enchanted her, only there was nothing supernatural about it.

"Oh my... I have never... That is the most beautiful...! Where did you get him? Where did he come from? He's Iberian, isn't he? He has to be. Oh my..."

It had taken more convincing than they had been prepared for to keep her from coming forward and look more closely at the horse. Sam had practically seen her hands itching, but they couldn't have her discover the dart lodged in its neck. The thick mane covered it for now, but you would easily feel it if you started examining the creature.

Eventually the stable manager had been able to snap out of it and led the way to the small barn. She had prepared the innermost large box, opposite the piled hay bales. A thick layer of straw covered the floor and the hay net on the wall had been filled. It's good to keep their mouths occupied when they come to a new place, she had said. Chewing calms them down if they're anxious. Of course, the brook horse hadn't seemed the least bit anxious.

And it doesn't now either, watching them as they approach. The intelligence in its dark eyes is very evident, but there is no sign of anxiety or hostility.

Dean puts his arms on the top of the stall door and leans against it. Sam stands next to him. The horse pulls another mouthful of hay from the net and gets to work, not paying any more attention to them.

"Looks kinda harmless now, doesn't he?"

"It's not harmless," Sam says.

"Exactly," Dean says, locking eyes with him "You spending the night here alone with this thing is a bad idea."

"So was you acting bait tonight."

"We didn't have a choice."

"We don't have a choice now, Dean," Sam looks at him. "We need to find a way to kill this thing and make sure it doesn't escape before we do. We can't do both unless we split up."

"So you find a way to kill it. That's your thing, research. I'll keep watch."

"No," Sam says. "I don't want you alone with it."

It's different, saying things like that to Dean now. Something has changed. Something was taken away when Dean was taken away, but it didn't come back when he did. Dean is different now. Sam is different too.

They only argue briefly.

.

When Dean leaves, Sam stands watching until he can't see the lights from the car any more. A few thin clouds have come to slowly streak the sky, blocking some stars from view. He becomes aware of the cold and shudders, stuffing his hands into his pockets and pulls the jacket closer around him as he goes back inside.

The brook horse lifts its head again, steadily chewing and follows him with those dark eyes; nothing sinister in them. Sam finds it uncomfortable. He opens the stall door and walks in, moving to where the dart sits lodged in the neck. He makes sure it sits firmly in place. The chewing drones on.

Sam sighs. He runs a hand over the silvery coat and wonders how likely it is that the creature would die if he stabbed it through the heart. If he cut the silver throat and let the blood spill out over the straw; would it die? No, probably not. The fact that it was corporeal was almost certainly the only reason why the steel kept it subdued. It was trapped inside its own skin. And if that was the case, then killing the physical form would most likely only free the spirit, not destroy it.

Pushing aside the thoughts, Sam steps away from the horse.

He rearranges the hay bales in the space opposite the brook horse's stall and sets up a seat for himself. Taking a blanket from the tack room and placing the loaded tranquilizer gun next to him, he settles down in the hay. The bales have not been packed very hard and the seat is just the right amount of comfortable; enough that he won't be too stiff in the morning, but not so much that he will drift off to sleep. The cold also helps; there is heating, making it much warmer than outside, but the small barn is still cold.

The grinding chewing sound makes a soothing soundtrack, interrupted by a regular rustling tearing sound as the brook horse pulls out more hay. As time passes, the grinding passages are shortened and instead of tearing at the net, the muzzle searches the straw patiently for stray strands. It shifts its heavy weight, moving slowly to cover new ground.

Occasionally the horse stops the searching and the chewing and raises its head, pricks its ears, very interested in one direction or another. Sam listens too when it does this, hand on the gun, watching the creature carefully. But nothing happens and soon it lowers its head again and continues its search of the floor.

There are many parts of life as a hunter that everyone would immediately see is unkind, in various degrees. Awful work hours, even if the schedule is usually flexible. Not much room for choice when it comes to food and sleeping arrangements. The constant danger to yourself, your friends and your family; the things you are forced to live through, and watch them live through. These things are easy to see and understand.

Something that might not be as obvious is the waiting. Patrolling, staking out houses or lairs, watching monsters. To some extent also the countless hours in the car, but you can distract yourself there, with music or discussions over this or that. It's the times when you can't distract yourself, when you need to keep your senses sharp, that are particularly unkind. Because that's when it's hard to avoid thinking.

Sam has to face what's been done and what's not been done yet. What failed. He has to face his old life and what could occupy his mind then, how insignificant those things seem now and how pointless and juvenile his aspirations. That life feels a lifetime away.

He thinks about Dean; about how he failed him, how he always seems to fail when he loves someone and they need him. That Dean is back now doesn't help. It doesn't change the fact that Sam failed him. In a way, having Dean here makes it harder. The changes in him, in his eyes, the air around him, the nightmares; constantly Sam is reminded of how he was weak when he needed to be strong and that Dean paid for it. Lately, since Dean finally shared what had happened in Hell, those thoughts have been particularly brutal.

Sam thinks about his failure almost seven months ago now. He thinks about the choices he made and what he did not choose.

.

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	9. Pull my silver strings, Baby 08

**The Roman Hunt  
part 1: Pull my silver strings, Baby  
**by Danny (a.k.a. Mashiro)

Supernatural fandom, series, SPOILERS for season 4  
EVENTUALLY SLASH: Dean/Castiel

Posted: 2013-02-04

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It's a shortie, I'm afraid, but I'll try to update the next one faster to make up for it.

Thank you wonderful beta raptorkind, and thank you lovely reader for reading!

.

DISCLAIMER: I don't own the rights to the Supernatural series or characters and I make no money writing this. I'm just a fan. This is fan fiction. All OC characters are fictional and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

.

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**Chapter 8**

**Drunk one night**

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The TV is on, giving the room a flickering, artificial glow. The glow rests on the walls, flickering, on the beds and the table and the chairs. Flickering.

Dean yawns. He squeezes his eyes shut and rubs at them. Bright stars against darkness. When his vision returns the black text on white greets him from the laptop screen, telling him as little as it did five seconds before. Dean sighs and grabs for the bottle of beer.

A raised angry female voice on the TV says: oh, that is my cousin no more! Followed by some laughter and some catcalls. Dean stifles another yawn. Should get some sleep really; has to stay awake tomorrow. This isn't his strong point anyway.

The angry voice rises again:

"You'll both be going to Hell for this, you are!"

It gets Dean's attention, as such statements and others like it tend to do these days. He looks over at the screen.

On a stage four chairs stand, three occupied and one empty. On the far right sits a large woman, the empty chair is next to her and to the left sits two men, very regular looking. One is wearing a cap and Dean can't help thinking about a younger version of Bobby.

"It's wrong," the woman says in the raised angry voice, grating. "You have done wrong and the Lord will punish, just you wait!"

"What do you know about the Lord, woman?" the man sitting beside younger Bobby leans over and shouts.

"The Bible says...!"

"Well, Jesus talks about love! He talks about love and I love this man! I love this man, so why shouldn't I love him? Why shouldn't I?"

"It's nothing weird, Em," says the other man, younger Bobby. His voice is lower and less forward. He shifts in his seat and looks at the woman. "We do nothing weird. What we have is no different from what you and George have."

"Oh, don't you dare compare my sacred marriage to your... your sinful filth!"

There is shouting in the audience, both cheers and applause and catcalls. It goes on for a while, before a man, that can only be the host, with the suit and the mic, speaks up and the audience calms down.

"May I ask how you two fellas met?"

"We were friends," says younger Bobby. "We're both in construction and was working on the same build together. We were just hanging out after work, having a beer, checking out girls."

There is stray laughter and calls from the audience. The woman shakes her head, rolling her eyes. The host looks surprised.

"Oh, then, you like girls as well?"

"Yeah, girls are great. I like girls too."

"I don't," says the other man. "I just hadn't had the balls to come out yet."

"So what happened? How did you...?" the host makes a gesture with his arms at the two of them.

It gets quiet then and the camera cuts to a close-up of younger Bobby, who doesn't look much like Bobby really, not close up. The cap is clean and new. He shifts again in his chair and shrugs softly.

"It just happened. We were drunk one night and... it just felt right. And it was. It is."

There is something about his eyes as he speaks. They are grey and calm. There is no shame or regret in those eyes. He's alright. He's... alright.

.

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	10. Pull my silver strings, Baby 09

**The Roman Hunt  
part 1: Pull my silver strings, Baby  
**by Danny (a.k.a. Mashiro)

Supernatural fandom, series, SPOILERS for season 4  
EVENTUALLY SLASH: Dean/Castiel

Posted: 2013-02-13

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This took a bit longer than I had wanted. Sorry!

I would like to mention that the name of the farm is a mix between the names of two riding centers that I went to when I was younger. It's my tiny tribute to many hours of awesomeness and hard work.

Thank you for reading! Thank you raptorkind for being the bestest beta. ^^

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DISCLAIMER: I don't own the rights to the Supernatural series or characters and I make no money writing this. I'm just a fan. This is fan fiction. All OC characters are fictional and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

.

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**Chapter 9**

**Days**

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Gustaf Jonason wakes up at 5.03 AM. He needs no alarm clock, seasons don't bother him; he wakes up at 5.03 AM and he gets out of bed with a grin on his face. Sometimes he takes a moment to recollect the dream he woke from, if it was a good one, but no more than minute, give or take a second or two.

Another moment he takes, this one more frequent, is by the window in the hallway. He stands, wearing nothing but his skin, and looks out over Joe's Lake Preserve. He likes seeing how the view is a little different every day. How it's dark on some days and snowy on others, sunrise or raining. Maybe ducks in the pond. A cat prowling the high grass. From about 5.06 to about 5.13, he stands in the hallway and looks out over his little corner of Cambridge, before he skips down the stairs, through the reception area, to the bathroom behind the counter. It's very daring, of course. There could be a new visitor waiting, or one of the guests could be up and moving, even if it is a bit early for that; it has happened. Jonason likes the risk, however; it's a little 'dangerous' and therefore appealing.

This Sunday morning, on November the 23rd, Gustaf comes down to find an older woman sitting in one of his sofas.

"Oh goodness me!" he yelps, then he starts laughing, slapping his thighs. "Mrs. Patrikson! You scared the life out of me!"

Old widow Sandra Patrikson does not laugh in reply, but Gustaf is hardly surprised. She is not the laughing type. Especially not this morning it seems, judging from her thin mouth and hard eyes; no, not amused at all.

"Put some clothes on, Mr. Jonason."

"Oh, Sandra, I've told you to call me, Gustaf!"

"Please, Mr. Jonason," she snarls.

He laughs merrily.

But he picks up the bathrobe he's got hanging in the cleaning closet behind his counter, for occasions just like this one. He stops by the small downstairs kitchen, making two cups of coffee before joining her on the sofa. She clears her throat, throwing a quick glance to see if he is decent. When she sees that he is, she huffs again and shakes her head, accepting the cup he offers.

"You will get in trouble for that one day, Mr. Jonason," she mutters.

"All the things that make life worth living will get you in trouble one day," he says, smiling. "That's what my father used to say."

She doesn't reply to that.

She tries a sip at the coffee, but apparently it's too hot. She puts the cup down again.

There is something swimming in her features, he notices now; something that hurts her terribly. Sandra is not the laughing type and she has never been. She smiles and she participates in life, but there is always a layer of... darkness over her and everything she does. Darkness or worry or shame, or just plain sadness. Sometimes it's thicker and sometimes it's thinner, never dominating but always present. It has always been present.

This morning that layer of darkness, that layer of sadness is dominating. It has swallowed her and it swims in her eyes and her slumped shoulders. Gustaf is suddenly horribly afraid for her.

"What is wrong, Sandra?" he asks softly and moves to her side, placing his hands over hers. "What is wrong?"

She closes her eyes. She swallows and then she looks at him.

"I need your help, Gustaf," she says. "Please, you must help me. Help me, please."

.

This morning the sun rises at 7.22 AM in Cambridge, but Dean leaves the motel room before that. He clears his throat and locks the door, then walks the corridor that takes him to the reception area, the sound of his boots giving a soft echo.

The area is empty, with no one behind the counter and Dean's eyes are inevitably drawn upwards. The corner of his mouth twitches. He shakes his head and chuckles.

A door opens then, behind the counter and Dean shifts his attention to see Gustaf Jonason appear, a grin on his face.

"Agent Marklund! Up and away so early, and on a Sunday too. No rest for the government!"

"No rest," Dean says, meaning it more than Jonason knows.

"You found a suitable place for your horse, I hope."

"We did, thanks."

"I was happy to help! If there is anything else you need, don't hesitate to ask. Tell agent Hedlund that as well. He is not with you today?"

"Already left. Look, I need to get going, so..."

"Of course, of course! Don't let me keep you."

The man smiles.

Later Dean will feel boundless remorse for not paying more attention to the strain in that smile, because he sees it, he notices that something is not quite right with that smile. But he's got things on his mind and he wants to get going. Sam will be waiting for Dean to take over the watching of the brook horse and Dean wants to know that everything's okay up there. And why would something of importance be bothering their motel owner? He's probably just in a hurry to get back to something.

So Dean dismisses the feeling that something is not quite right with Gustaf Jonason's smile this morning, and later he will regret it.

.

Some early bird or another has been out with their snow plow, Dean notices as he turns onto the smaller road that will take him through the woods to Olstorp Farm. The surface is a smooth stretch, except where the snow bank has cracked and spilled its white clumps. Lucky. Not that Baby couldn't have handled the snow; she most definitely could have. It's just unnecessary when there are snow plows and people willing to take them out early in the morning.

Despite the early hour, there are several cars parked on the courtyard and the lights are on in both the big barn and the small one. In the big barn the busy movement of younger and older mostly girls and women, but also a guy, can be heard and seen against the warm lights through the windows. One of the younger girls puts her hands to one of the windows and peers out.

Dean parks by the small barn, next to the trailer. He had taken the truck back to town last night, but his own car today, having no reason not to. They have no plans to move the horse yet, not until they know what to do with it and they didn't know that yet.

He gets out and the door creaks shut behind him. At the same time one half of a big set of double doors opens and a small body peers out of the big barn, shadowed by the yellow light behind and the not yet lifted early morning darkness outside.

"Who are you?" the young girl shouts. "Are you with Sam? You have the horse in the small barn?"

"Um... Yeah," Dean replies, not prepared.

"He's really pretty!"

Sam or the horse, Dean wants to ask, chuckling under his breath, but doesn't.

"You're really lucky," the girl continues. "I'm Sarah. Sarah Rother."

Someone says something inside the barn, the words muffled but the tone not quite approving. Sarah looks over her shoulders, listening. When the other voice is finished, she looks back to Dean again, but only says "bye" and shuts the door.

Sam opens the door to the small barn before Dean can.

"Hey," he says, a straw of hay stuck in his hair. Dean squeezes past him.

"Are you showing off our brook horse to the kids now?"

"What? No, she... just came in."

"What, there was nothing you could do? She overpowered you? What is she, nine?"

Sam sighs.

"More like twelve. And I didn't let her get close to it; she was just looking."

"Just looking," Dean repeats, admonishingly but he plays with a smile. "She thinks you're pretty, you know?"

"What?" Sam looks confused, then equally annoyed and uncomfortable. He sighs again and rolls his eyes.

The brook horse raises his head when Dean approaches. It's eating again; Sam must have tossed it some hay. But it's not as occupied with the food this morning, taking time to stop and to stretch its head out. It bumps Dean's arm with its muzzle before he can pull back. A shiver that is both pleasant and unpleasant runs through him.

"Hey to you too," Dean mutters. He waits until the horse goes back to eating before getting closer again and leaning against the door. Sam comes to stand next to him.

"So," he says. "You find anything last night?"

"Nothing," Dean says. "Only versions of the same old stories we've seen before. Nothing that seems to be connected to this guy here."

He points at the calm, silver horse, busy with its food inside the low walls. Sam nods.

"Bobby hasn't called?"

"Not yet."

They stand for a moment, side by side, watching the brook horse as morning slips along its steady schedule.

It's a bit brighter in the sky when Sam leaves. A small group of two normal sized horses, a pony and their riders are gathered by the big barn, under the beam of an outdoors lamp. They seem to be getting ready for a ride, the horses saddled and one of the riders is already seated.

Before he gets into the car, Sam looks at Dean. He wants to say something, something Dean wouldn't like, by the look of it; potential lines and dialogues are considered and discarded behind his furrowed brow.

"Be careful, okay?" he settles for, and Dean finds he doesn't mind.

"I'll bring you lunch later," Sam continues.

"Thanks. Get me some pie too."

Dean goes back inside, but he stops just inside the doors. The brook horse has raised its head and looks at him, with dark, dark eyes through the thick silver forelock. He finds himself thinking about the black eyes of demons. He tries to find that connection that the brook horse had made with him before Sam shot it with the steel; that eye-stinging connection with words only spoken from inside them, but it's not there. The inside is blank.

The horse lowers its head again. Dean crosses the small barn and settles in the hay with the tranquilizer gun that Sam had left him. He watches the silver back move slowly around the box and hears the muzzle gently snap up straws of hay.

Early morning darkness turns to dawn. At first it's just the clouds turning a brighter shade of grey, but before long a stream of sunlight hits one of the windows. Dean hears how horses and riders spend their Sunday; talking, laughing, an occasional angry yelling and neighing. Hooves. The brook horse makes no fuss what so ever. It wanders around, nips at straws or just stands watching and listening.

It's been four hours or so when Dean hears the soft footsteps in the snow outside the barn.

"It's off limits!" he calls, but the door handle is pressed down with a squeak and the door is pushed open. A sliver of sun falls inside, on the concrete floor. Dean gets up.

A girl snakes inside through the small opening then closes the door again. She's wearing tall riding boots, a helmet and her long hair in a braid on her back.

"Hi, I'm Sarah Rother."

"You know what off-limits mean?" Dean asks.

"Sorry," she says, and looks apologetic, but still shifts forward.

"This is federal business, kid. You need to leave."

"I know. I just had to see him again before we left, in case he's not here later. We have to go back and clean out the boxes, so I'll be back, but maybe he won't be here then. He's so pretty."

She stands on her toes, steadying herself against one of the other box stalls. Her eyes glitter when the brook horse raises his head and a soft 'oh' escapes her. She takes a few more steps forward, inching along the low wall, still on her toes. Dean takes a few forward as well and wonders how close Sam had let her come.

"What's his name?"

"How do you know it's a 'he'?"

Sarah Rother giggles.

"I'd name him Silver," she says, not taking her eyes off the horse, staring. Transfixed.

"I don't know what his name is," Dean says and moves to block her sight. "Look, kid, you need to get on out of here."

She leans to the side to stay with the horse, then finally looking back at Dean.

"Sam didn't know either," she says.

"Did you bother Sam this much too?"

The girl giggles again. Then a woman calls her name in the yard outside and she sighs, in that dramatic way that kids sigh.

"I'll see if he's still here when we come back."

"Don't," Dean says, but she's already leaving, waving and saying 'bye' the same way she did before, earlier that morning. She closes the door behind her.

.

Sam starts his day with breakfast, followed by a few hours of sleep until the morning has progressed far enough that he can visit the rest of the Cambridge inhabitants that have received packages from Sweden.

Mr. Carnell shows him a handmade glass vase, from a very famous glassblower, Sam is assured. Mr. Turner gathered together no fewer than nine pairs of knitted pantaloons. They don't make pantaloons like they make them in Sweden! Sam is assured. Mrs. Peterson can't help him, she says, because she already gave the old books to her niece for her birthday. "And she's gone back to Washington now. Go there if you want to look at them," the old lady mutters. Sam manages to convince her to show him the box they arrived in ("The box? Why do you want to look at a box? You'd think you boys would have better things to do..."), but the EMF meter shows nothing. Not unexpected, if the content is in Washington.

When lunch time comes, Sam buys a salad for himself and a burger and pie for Dean, and then drives out to Olstorp Farm. While they eat, they swap progress updates. Or rather, Sam lets Dean knows that he's found more nothing and Dean moans about it being Sunday. Why couldn't it be a nice school day instead?

Before heading back to town, Sam stops by the last package receiver they had wanted to check out, but the pair of handmade curtains gives nothing. He drives back to the motel to keep digging online.

.

Throughout the day, cars arrive and leave, new riders coming, caring for their horses and then leaving again. Dean hadn't expected a small place like this one to be so busy.

A few more times he hears footsteps approaching the small barn. One time there are two sets, coming hesitantly closer; they walk and stop. Walk again, and stop.

"Come on!" an angry voice hisses.

"But mom said..."

"Who cares! Do you want to see him or not!"

"But Sarah..."

When the door handle is pressed down, slowly, Dean shouts: Off-limits! And the girl that isn't Sarah screams and runs.

"Oh come on!" Sarah calls after her, but she lets go of the door handle and follows her friend.

A little while after, Dean hears the footsteps again, but this time they sneak toward the windows. Before they can get very close however, an angry female voice calls for them and they sigh with disappointment. Quickly they shuffle away, whispering.

The afternoon is old enough that darkness has begun to fall, when Dean hears footsteps again. It's two sets again, but not the same two. One of these is heavier and much more determined, accompanied by an angry mutter; the other set is light and shuffling.

Dean stands and brushes himself off to make sure he looks the part of federal agent at least somewhat. When the knock on the door comes (a very no-nonsense knock), he calls 'Yeah?'

A woman in a rider's outfit, but with no helmet, comes in, dragging Sarah Rother in after her. They stop by the door. The girl looks sullen, eyes downcast. The woman pulls at her hand.

"Well?" She snaps.

"I'm sorry," Sarah mumbles.

"Sarah!"

"I'm sorry!" she repeats and looks up. "I'm sorry I've been bothering you, sir."

"It's fine," Dean says. "Really. No harm done."

"Go back outside, Sarah," the woman says and the girl shuffles out, throwing one last glance toward where the brook horse stands watching.

"I apologize for my daughter," the woman says. "She will be punished."

"Really, it's okay," Dean says. "Kids are curious."

"She still shouldn't have bothered you."

"I'm sure she won't do it again."

"No, she most definitely will not."

Some of the woman's tension falls away and she relaxes a little, shoulders falling. A small smile comes to her and Dean smiles back. She is pretty when she's not angry, he notices.

Then something comes into her eyes, something... She looks behind Dean, her eyes widening. But it's not the awe that came into Julia Nilson-Brody's eyes and not the fascination that was in Sarah's. A chill runs through Dean and he looks too, not sure what he expects to find; but the brook horse looks the same as it did before, looking at them with what seems to be interest. There is no change in its temper or the look in its eyes. Dean can't feel the eye-stinging connection.

"But isn't that...?" the woman says and Dean understands the something in her eyes. It's recognition.

"What, you know this horse?" he asks.

"Why, yes," she says. "It has to be. I haven't seen any horse like him before. What is he doing here? Has she done something wrong? Is he stolen? At least I think it's him."

"Has who done something wrong?" Dean finds his heart pounding. "What do you know about this horse?"

"If it is him," she says, sounding a little less convinced now. "He looks a bit young to be..."

"Who!"

"Mrs. Patrikson! I could swear that that is old Sandra Patrikson's horse."

.

.


	11. Pull my silver strings, Baby 10

**The Roman Hunt  
part 1: Pull my silver strings, Baby  
**by Danny (a.k.a. Mashiro)

Supernatural fandom, series, SPOILERS for season 4  
EVENTUALLY SLASH: Dean/Castiel

Posted: 2013-03-01

.

Thank you raptorkind for helping me to beta and thank you, lovely reader, for reading!

.

DISCLAIMER: I don't own the rights to the Supernatural series or characters and I make no money writing this. I'm just a fan. This is fan fiction. All OC characters are fictional and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

.

.

**Chapter 10**

**River Reign**

.

.

River Reign, in winter slain.

River Reign, has gone insane.

River Reign, the children's bane.

River Reign, his dead complain.

River Reign, with silver mane.

'Til water's stain, he will remain.

.

Sam leans back in his chair, looking at the screen. It was their guy, it had to be. River Reign.

He had been spending the afternoon researching for a way to kill the brook horse or banish it from the river for good and only found semi-useful bits of lore. He had talked to Bobby again and it had seemed as if they would have to try and put together some sort of custom-made banishing ritual. They possibly had enough information to make it work, and they had the brook horse available for collecting hair and blood. Bobby had thought they might need to burn the horse, alive; Sam had hoped it didn't have to come to that.

And now, so it seemed. He had found a site put together by a stay-at-home mom in Michigan, exploring her Swedish heritage. She had translated a number of old Swedish proverbs and songs and rhymes and one of them had been from same region as their brook horse. The lines certainly did seem to fit as well. And the end of it was...

It wasn't much, not really, and who knew if it was even accurate, but after encountering nothing but nothing when it came to permanently banishing a brook horse from its waters, especially not this brook horse, anything was a very welcome spark of hope, and useful.

Of course, they would have to figure out what it meant. Water's stain? Stain the brook horse with some kind of water or stain the water of the river? With what? Holy water? A potion? Would they need some kind of ritual? And it could just be nothing. Not nearly everything was accurate when it came to these things, under these circumstances particularly.

It is something however.

Sam copies the rhyme to a notepad and gets ready to leave. The world outside the window is dark and his turn to sit watch is coming up. He's just about to leave the room, when his phone starts ringing. The display says 'Dean'.

"Have we come across the name Sandra Patrikson anywhere?" Dean asks.

Sam frowns, stepping out and locking the door behind him.

"Patrikson? I don't think so. Why?"

"I just talked to a woman who could swear that our brook horse belongs to an old widow named Sandra Patrikson. She said she's never seen a horse like him before. Sam, what if the drownings didn't start when it came here. What if they started when it **escaped**?"

"Are you saying that this Sandra Patrikson kept it as a pet? That it's been here all along?"

"Why not? With how it's behaved so far, a two-year-old could look after that thing. You on your way? I got an address. I wanna go talk to this lady."

"Yeah. I was just about to call. I might have found a way to banish it, if we're lucky."

Sam tells him about the site he found and the translated rhyme, of River Reign.

"Yeah, that's not cryptic," Dean mutters at the last line.

"It's better than the nothing we've been getting so far."

"I guess. As long as we keep it tame it's not like we're in a hurry anyway."

They hang up not long after that. The ride up to the farm is uneventful. When Sam arrives Dean is waiting outside, stomping the thoroughly trampled snow under the light from the barn wall lamp, his hands cupped over his mouth. He leaves the lamplight for the headlights as Sam pulls up and the engine is left running.

"I'll call when I've talked to Mrs. Patrikson," Dean says as they switch places and he slips in behind the wheel.

Sam stands, watching until he can't see the lights from the car any more, before going inside.

The brook horse steps up to the box stall door and stretches its neck out to nudge at his arm. The calm, gentle eyes watch him with obvious intelligence and Sam thinks about what Dean had said, about it not seeming very interested in going anywhere. He wonders about that. When the warm muzzle presses against his skin, he gets a feeling that this creature here, with the calm and gentle eyes, cares about him, and he can't help thinking that if it had been a real horse, it would have been a really nice one. But this creature is an enchanter, is it not?

Sam runs a hand down the soft, silver neck.

.

A car crosses the State Highway 95 bridge, heading east and the cones of headlights lick up the trees that grows on the river bank. The season has stripped them naked, but they have wrapped themselves in thick white winter blankets to keep warm. Tire sounds are muffled by the snow.

Beneath the bridge is quiet and still. Nothing moves and no one calls for comfort or assistance. The snowy banks that cradle the river are quiet too. Blanketed trees and shrubs stand alone.

.

Dean parks on the sidewalk, but stays in the car for a moment, watching the white house on the other side of the road from a distance.

It's a family home, a bit on the small side; here and there the white paint looks to be peeling from the walls. The garden is thick with evergreens hiding under snow. The pathway leading up to the house is cleared and in the light from the street lamps, Dean can see it's been walked on. There is a small porch by the entrance, lit up by a single, simple light on the wall. A second light is on in one of the windows on the second floor. All the other windows are dark. In the neighboring houses, TVs are flickering, lights are on in pretty much every room, but the Patrikson house is dark. The driveway is empty and there is no garage where a car could be hiding.

Dean still tries the front door first, pressing the simple white button and hearing the sound ring inside. Waiting. Pressing again.

"Mrs. Patrikson," he calls, but the house is dead still. Following a cleared trail in the snow around the house, Dean finds a backdoor entrance. This one also has a light, but the trees give plenty of cover. Still, he goes back to the car and lets the evening grow older. The activity in the neighborhood dies down, one light and one TV after another being turned off. No one comes home to the Patrikson house. When he feels he's waited long enough, Dean leaves the car again and heads for the backdoor entrance.

The house is quiet and dark, as clearly empty from the inside as it was from the outside. Some light sneaks in from the windows, where the street lights evade the trees, sending thick and slim lines of brightness over the sofa in the living room, a bookcase in the hallway, a kitchen counter. Dean moves carefully despite the hour, keeping to the shadows and away from the windows.

There are dirty dishes in the sink, from today from the looks of them. Dean pokes a fork through a gathering of potato crumbs. So someone must have been here, but where are they now? What would an old lady be doing out this late on a Sunday?

He walks over to the fireplace and light from the window falls on the pictures on the mantelpiece. Smiling kids, a girl and a boy in various stages of life: diapers, school, graduation. A large, grinning man, with a large, caught fish, on a ladder with a paintbrush to the house, at an amusement park with the kids. A wedding picture, the man grinning, the woman... Dean picks up the framed memory. The woman's smile is small and obviously only there because she is expected to smile at her wedding picture. There is sadness in her eyes and for a moment Dean can't look away from them.

He puts the picture back in its place, then scans over the photographs again and realizes that that is the only one where the woman is featured. No grinning with fish or in amusement parks. Or with any...

'Horse' is Dean about to think, when a car passes by on the street and a flare of headlights strike a section of the wall to the right. He turns on his flashlight and there are pictures of the woman that the mantelpiece was missing. Many of pictures, far more than of the kids and the husband combined. And she is not alone.

Sam picks up right away.

"Dean?"

"I'm at the house," Dean says. "The old lady's not here, but that woman I talked to, she was right, it is Patrikson's horse. It's been her horse for a while."

"Really? Are you sure?"

Sandra Patrikson stands with the horse's head over her shoulder. She sits on its back with feet bare and no saddle, she lies in a field and it's nipping at her hair.

"Definitely," Dean says.

There is no doubt in his mind that the horse in the pictures is the same creature that he met for the first time on the ice two days ago. That they're keeping now at Olstorp Farm. If someone had put twenty similar horses together, Dean is sure he would have been able to pick out the brook horse. It's something about the eyes.

"I think I saw her, Sam. When we grabbed the brook horse. I thought I saw someone on the river bank."

"The old woman?"

"Yeah," Dean says. "I think it was her."

It's her whole life, Dean realizes, watching the pictures hanging on the wall. In the oldest ones she is young, with smooth skin and thick blond curls. Then from one frame to the next years pass, lines are drawn on her face as the quality of the pictures improves, black and white to color, blond curls turning grey. Only the horse remains the same.

"I'll stake out the house tonight, in case she comes back. If she doesn't, you should ask around tomorrow. We need to find her."

Before Dean leaves the house, he throws one last glance at the wall and the many pictures of woman and horse. Sandra Patrikson is smiling in every one of them.

.

Sam puts the phone back in his pocket and meets the brook horse's eyes. It has raised its head and is looking at him, calm and intelligent. Or is it calm? Sam suddenly isn't sure. Maybe it's... stillness, rather. Cool. Levelheadedness.

He walks to the door, pushes the handle down and opens it. The air bites cold at him, but it's a good bite. Clears the head. The yard between the barns is still, scattered with a muddled pattern of tracks of cars and horses and riding boots in the snow. Lamps cast rays of visibility and shadows equally over the place, the rental trailer, an old truck pushed up against the wall and the fences.

Sam's breath is white. There is no moon out tonight and no stars. He goes back inside.

.

It isn't a sudden, unexpected event that takes place. No one jumps out from behind a box stall or a bale of hay, hoping to take him by surprise.

Sam hears the car approaching and he knows immediately that it's not Dean; the sound is wrong for the Impala. Sandra Patrikson? Come to save her horse? He glances at the silver creature, but it seems hardly interested; it only pricks up its ears for a moment before going back to a half-dozing stance.

It could be anyone, of course. Someone who was here today could have forgotten something that couldn't wait until morning. A cell phone? Or it's just someone on their way to somewhere else, coming home from a late visit to a friend's house. Olstorp Farm isn't the only place along the road. He still checks the gun and brings it with him when he goes to a window and peers outside.

The car is two bright headlights in the night, coming closer. It's driving faster than it should be driving, Sam feels. When it makes the turn onto the smaller road leading to the stable grounds, the tires lose their grip for a moment, before regaining it. It's a washed-out red Ford sedan, Sam sees when the lights from the buildings reach the vehicle and he gets a distinct feeling that he's seen the car before, but he can't quite remember where. Until the driver breaks hard and throws open the door, almost slipping coming out.

"Mr. Hedlund!" The man shouts. "Mr. Hedlund!"

"Mr. Jonason?" Frowning, Sam opens the door and the cold of the night comes at him. "What are you doing here?"

A wave of relief washes over the anxious man.

"Oh, Mr. Hedlund, there you are! You have to come with me quick. It's... It's Mr. Marklund. He's been hurt!"

The cold on the inside spreads out from Sam's heart like ice made liquid. It's a lie. It has to be a lie. He finds himself asking: How bad? What happened?

"I... I don't know!" Jonason says. "I wasn't there, but I... saw the paramedics and... They've taken him to the hospital! I... I know you don't have a car, so I have come to take you there. Come!"

He waves for Sam to come.

It is a lie, Sam realizes when reason returns. It doesn't make sense. Even if Dean had been hurt right after they hung up, outside Mrs. Patrikson's house, and someone was right there to see it, there wouldn't have been enough time for paramedics to arrive. And why would Gustaf Jonason be there to see it? No. It's a lie.

"Hurry!" Jonason calls, waving, his eyes flickering, nervously. Between Sam, and the barn.

There had been a backdoor at the far end of the small barn, Sam remembers Julia showing them; leading out to the fields behind the barn and the forest. They used it when cleaning out the stalls and Sam had thought they need to keep that exit in mind, if the brook horse tried to escape.

"Please, Mr. Hedlund," Jonason is pleading. "Please come with me."

Sam turns and runs back inside, the man calling after him: "No, please! Mr. Hedlund!"

The backdoor is open, opened to a snowy darkness. The door to the brook horse's stall is open as well and between it and the backdoor stands a small woman with grey hair, holding a rope that has been tied around the brook horse's neck. Sam notices the head of what looks like a metal hairpin, sticking out from the ridge of the silver mane. A thin line of blood has trailed from where the dart should be.

The woman looks so tiny, next to the large silver creature. Almost like a child, and her features shines with the same kind of joy that strikes children. Standing there, with the brook horse, she doesn't look old at all. But her eyes flare when she sees Sam. She steps in front of the creature, holding her arms out and she shouts:

"Don't come any closer!"

Sam stops, slowly raising his hands.

"Mrs. Patrikson? You're Mrs. Patrikson, aren't you?"

"No," she shakes her head. "No, don't speak to me. I'm taking him with me and I won't let you stop me."

"Mrs. Patrikson, please. I just want to talk."

"No! No, you don't. You want to... convince me that what you're doing here is right, but it's not! He belongs with me!"

"Look, we didn't know about you. We just found out that he was yours. My friend, he's at your house right now, looking for you. Just let us help."

"Ha!" she laughs, bitter and angry. "You don't help him. You don't help me. He has been my companion for forty seven years. He came with me to this country. I have kept him safe for all these years and he has never hurt anyone."

"He's drowned three children!" Sam shouts "He got out!"

She shakes her head. Her eyes are shiny with tears. He swallows.

"Look," he says. "I know that he means a lot to you..."

"He means the world!"

"...but you can't keep a creature like him for a pet! You... You know what he is. You kept him safe because you knew what he was. Because you knew what he would do if he got loose. You were watching us on the river, when we captured him. You have watched him before that, haven't you? You have seen what he does."

"No. No, that's not him. That monster is not him. **This** is him! He is kind and gentle, he's not a monster. Please," she pleads and there is such pain and regret in her eyes. "Please, let me take him away."

Sam clenches his jaw, tightens his hand around the gun. But there is no choice.

"I'm sorry," he says. "You know that I can't let you do that, Mrs. Patrikson."

Sandra Patrikson squeezes her eyes shut and tears trail down her cheeks.

"We can't risk him hurting anyone else," Sam says.

She shakes her head, her eyes still shut. Before she moves, she mumbles something. It looks like 'forgive me'.

.

.


	12. Pull my silver strings, Baby 11

**The Roman Hunt  
Part 1: Pull my silver strings, Baby  
**by Danny (a.k.a. Mashiro)

Supernatural fandom, series, SPOILERS for season 4  
EVENTUALLY SLASH: Dean/Castiel

Posted: 2013-03-19

.

Sorry for the lateness! I hope everyone survived. ^^

Thank you, lovely reader, for reading, and thank you, raptorkind, for beta-ing!

.

DISCLAIMER: I don't own the rights to the Supernatural series or characters and I make no money writing this. I'm just a fan. This is fan fiction. All OC characters are fictional and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

.

.

**Chapter 11**

**Pull my silver strings, Baby**

.

.

On the early, early morning of November the 24th, an owl sits watching the world below. Completely still she sits, and completely silent. This unseasonable cold has taken nature by surprise and many animals are dead that would have otherwise lived. Hunger tears at the owl's insides, but she knows patience. Survival depends on patience.

So when the small rabbit dares to slowly move out from its shelter, the owl waits. The prey sniffs the air, shifts its ears. Moves a little bit further out. It's a young one; it's cautious but not cautious enough, still lacking experience. And it won't get time to gain it, the owl decides, lifting off from the branch where she sits, gliding soundlessly.

Unfortunately, before the owl can strike down, the rabbit pricks its ears up and the moment after, it flees. It's not the owl's doing however. Something else is there. Barely has she time to adjust focus from the prey to scan for the source of its fright, when the crisp air below her is filling with pale misty smoke, that materializes into a horse shape, followed by a snow muffled sound of galloping hooves.

The owl turns in the air and on silent wings flies off, away from the river.

The brook horse falls into a leisurely trot and makes a zigzag through the forest, down the river bank. Snow whips up around the hooves and the long silvery tail is stroking the disheveled white cover behind it.

When it reaches the ice, it rears up playfully on its hind legs, arching its back and stomping down with its hooves again. Then it stretches down and burrows its muzzle in the snow, blowing the air from its lungs in an explosion of white.

After it has made the proper greetings to its home, slowly, with no purpose but to enjoy the winter night, the brook horse follows the river stream. At times it runs its muzzle through the snow to feel the ice. At times, it gives a playful whinny and breaks into a run, bucking and kicking up snow, racing down the river. So it spends the last hours of the night, until it can feel that dawn has come too close.

It stops its games then and leaves the world of men and rabbits. Its horse shape dissolve and in a rising of mist, it trickles down, melting through ice and pour into the river. It will stay there, resting in the dark and cold, waiting.

.

Dean gets the feeling of entering a crime scene when he arrives at Olstorp Farm; minus the cops, fortunately. An old woman squats on the ground, leaning against the wall of the small barn, her head hung low. It is the same old woman that Dean had seen in the photographs in the house, and on the river bank that night when they tamed the brook horse: Sandra Patrikson. Next to her stands the man that Dean is used to seeing under a smiling stuffed moose head, their motel owner, Gustaf Jonason. He looks dazed, like he's seen a ghost, which probably isn't far from the truth. He's stroking the woman's shoulder with one hand, but his eyes are staring out into the night.

Someone is missing though; Dean turns and scans the area, but then Sam appears from behind the small barn, a grim look on his face.

"Hey," Dean says. "It's gone?"

"Yeah. There are some tracks leading out from the barn, but only the first few are really clear. There's nothing beyond the grounds."

"Spirit form, huh?"

Sam nods. He had called Dean and told him to come over, explained what had happened. Before Sam had had time to react, the old woman had pulled the last piece of steel from the brook horse and it had regained its senses almost immediately. During the small window of opportunity when it had still been dazed, Mrs. Patrikson had made sure Sam couldn't get any shots off without risking hitting her.

"Damned old ladies," Dean mutters. "She saying anything?"

"No. Nothing except she believed that her horse could still be saved. She's pretty upset."

"That thing doesn't need to be saved. It needs to be put down."

"He's been with her for almost fifty years, Dean."

"Yeah, well, she should have made it sixty; then those kids would still be alive. You can't keep monsters as pets, Sam."

Dean crosses the distance to where Sandra Patrikson and Gustaf Jonason are standing. The man comes to meet him.

"Mr. Marklund. I'm so sorry about this; I was only trying to..."

"Shut up," Dean says, not even looking at the man. Then he says: "Mrs. Patrikson?"

The old woman looks up from her place on the ground. There is a bitter mix of resignation and defiance in her eyes. Dean remembers the joy in them in the photos hanging on the wall in her living room. How young she had looked and how old she looks now. The wrinkles are like cuts, deeply shadowed scars of time.

"What do you want, Mr. Marklund?" she asks.

"I want you to tell me everything," Dean says, through barely contained anger. "Everything about that creature you just let loose on the kids of this town. I want you to tell me how you got it here, how you kept it, and then I want you to tell me how I kill it. Because I will kill it."

Sandra Patrikson looks down.

"The only thing you decide," he continues. "Is how many kids it gets to kill before I do it."

There is a moment of quiet, before the old woman gets up off the ground, ignoring the offered hand of Mr. Jonason. When she stands she looks at Dean and she looks hard; not angry hard, but searching hard. Then the defiance is fading away, leaving resignation and weariness, and emptiness. She nods.

"Very well."

.

"I was born in 1915, in summer, but it was winter I liked best. It's odd, I suppose, because winter was hard in those days. My parents would have had nine children if it wasn't for winter, but we were only seven. I was the sixth. But I liked winter. I enjoyed the silence.

The village where I grew up was called Ersmark. It was a small village in a valley that they called the Valley of Horses, the far north of Sweden. I believe they still call it that. The Valley of Horses. It was there that I met him.

I was twelve years old and I was walking home one evening in the winter and... Most people didn't believe the old stories about trolls and goblins and the brook horse, but I did and when I saw that beautiful, white horse, standing there on the ice, I knew exactly who he was.

He was speaking to me, in my mind. You know this, don't you, Mr. Marklund? You know how he speaks, inside you. He was telling me warm things, lovely things and he wanted me to come with him. Come with me, he said. It will be warm with me.

But see, I believed. I knew who he was. I had with me a hair pin that one of my brothers had made me out of scraps; a crude piece, but I treasured it, and it was steel. I knew that steel was the protection against horses of his kind, so I hid the pin in my hand as I approached him.

His voice was like a warm, warm blanket. It was like sitting in front of the fire place with your feet so close to the flames that you think they might catch fire. It's difficult to keep your mind when he whispers, but... I suppose I did. I was close enough to touch him and when he lowered his head, I stabbed the pin into his neck.

I couldn't believe what a gentle horse he was, underneath. That he still is! I... He is not evil by nature, he is... cursed, tainted by something that makes him do horrible things. It's a sickness, and the cure is steel, and I cured him! I cured him and I cared for him and I..."

Sandra Patrikson had grown taller in her chair as she spoke, her voice stronger, but she slumps back down again and her voice weakens and trails off. She folds one hand over the other. On the wall a clock ticks patiently, on its way toward dawn.

They are in the kitchen of her house. She sits by the table and Sam sits with her. Dean stands leaning against a counter, his arms folded over his chest. She had refused to help unless they let her explain and they would need her help, she had said. She had assured them that the horse would make no trouble this night, saying that he would want to take the time to savor being reunited with his river.

"Did you care for him for all this time?" Sam asks.

"Yes," she answers. "He was everything to me, and he cared for me too. I freed him from the taint, from his sickness. I kept him hidden; I knew I had to, or people would start to wonder. But I cared for him. I named him Vattne, after the Swedish word for water.

My family came here to America in 1931. It was late. Many, many Swedes had come here before, during the 19th century and the early 20th, but with the First World War the great emigration had practically stopped. It was my aunt that convinced my parents to go. She was already here.

I managed to make a deal with a trader and get Vattne on the ship. So he came here with me and I kept him like I had kept him in Sweden. When I grew older, I took him out sometimes, presenting him as my horse; as several horses, to be exact. Yes, all this time I cared for him."

Sam is frowning.

"When you left Sweden, did you... do anything, to make him come with you? Did you do anything when you got here?"

"Something magical, you mean," Sandra says.

"Well... yes."

"No," she answers firmly. "He was just a horse, my horse. I made sure the pin was safe, but that was all I needed to do."

Sam looks at Dean and Dean frowns too. They are thinking the same thing. A brook horse is tied to a specific river or lake; it's its home. If the brook horse is tamed and then released again or breaks free, it will return to that river or that lake that is its home. Technically, this brook horse shouldn't be haunting this river at all, but the river in Sweden.

They had worked under the assumption that the brook horse had accidentally been transferred from its original river in Sweden to the Rum River. That assumption would still work if the transfer had been deliberate and the brook horse had been tamed at the time. It would work even better actually. Sandra Patrikson's story of taming and keeping of the brook horse had answered all questions; up until now.

"You must understand," she says. "I couldn't... hurt him. He was everything to me. I have never been closer to anyone than I was to him. My mother and father, my siblings, my husband's children, my husband..."

She shakes her head.

"But him... I would lay down my life for him." She looks at Sam, then at Dean. "Do you know what that's like? To love someone that much? To be so close to someone? And... I failed him," Sandra Patrikson continues, casting down her eyes. "I was supposed to keep him safe, but I couldn't... I couldn't stop the monster from consuming him."

Dean doesn't need to look at Sam to see what is painted on his brother's face. He clenches his jaw.

"What... happened?" Sam asks, clearing his throat. "What happened when... the monster consumed him?"

"I don't know," the old woman says. "It could have been someone curious, or jealous of me. It could have horse thieves as well. It could have just been the wrath of God. I don't know. I had done nothing different the night before. Everything was in order, I always make sure. But when I came the next morning, the door to his stall was open and he was gone. First I thought that... he had just been taken away, but I found his pin was in the straw."

Sandra turns the metal ornament in her hands, stroking the needle as if fondly, but her eyes are swimming with pain and sadness.

"I knew then," she says and sets the item on the table. "I knew that he had been truly lost to me."

"May I?" Sam asks and she nods. He takes the object and turns it in his hands, studying it.

"Did anyone else know?" Dean asks. "About what he was?"

"I never told a soul. And what could I have said? That he was a magical horse that I kept tamed by having a hair pin in his neck?"

She shakes her head. There sits a small jar of toothpicks on the table and Sam reaches for it, taking one of the splinters and scraping the surface. He then brings pointy end to his nose, smelling and scrunching up his nose. He straightens, slumping his shoulders, and the look that he gives Dean is all it takes really. Dean understands, just like that. The pieces fall into place.

"Mrs. Patrikson? This..." Sam says and shows her. "This substance. Did you find this when your horse had gone missing?"

Sandra looks and nods almost immediately.

"The sulfur, yes. It was there. I assume it was brought there by whoever it was that set Vattne loose. My late husband handled sulfur in his work and it was sometimes on his shoes when he came home. Why?"

Dean looks up to the ceiling, a clear pine, heavily yellowed by age. Dark patches seem to form faces, distorted faces, staring down at them. The clock on the wall ticks patiently.

.

.


	13. Pull my silver strings, Baby 12

**The Roman Hunt  
part 1: Pull my silver strings, Baby  
**by Danny (a.k.a. Mashiro)

Supernatural fandom, series, SPOILERS for season 4  
EVENTUALLY SLASH: Dean/Castiel

Posted: 2013-06-24

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Sorry! This chapter is very late, hahaa. If you started reading this in winter, thank you for your patience. :3 Thank you raptorkind for beta-ing!

WARNING: There will be some display of heterosexual acts in this chapter.

.

DISCLAIMER: I don't own the rights to the Supernatural series or characters and I make no money writing this. I'm just a fan. This is fan fiction. All OC characters are fictional and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

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**Chapter 12**

**Between the Lines**

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Sandra Patrikson breathes slowly has her eyes cast down. Her shoulders rise and fall slightly as she breathes, slowly.

"One... day, in the fall, I was fourteen years old, a man came to see me. The man who came, everyone knew of him; he was a wise man, with knowledge of things that people said was nonsense, until they needed help that only he could offer. He had helped my mother with a bad tooth ache once.

I was walking home, when the wise man was standing in the road before me. My heart stopped. He looked at me and he was grave. I was so frightened, not for myself, but for Vattne. The man told me that he knew what I had done.

'It is River Reign you keep, girl,' he said. 'No kitten to be your playmate.'

Then I was angry, despite my fear. I told him that he was my horse. I had saved him. The man laughed, but it was a harsh, unkind sound.

'Foolish girl,' he said. 'But I will give you something, something that you will need when River Reign will play with you no longer.'

Sandra Patrikson stands and she leaves the kitchen. There is the opening of a cupboard in the hallway. There is the sound of things being shuffled around, clinking of glass, scraping of boxes. The cupboard closes again and the old woman returns, carrying an old bottle of green-colored glass. Inside there are two dried twigs and something tiny and crumpled on the bottom.

"Inside, I knew all along," she says. "Ever since I found his pin in the straw that morning, I have known that he is lost to me. Truly lost to me. When I came to free him from you, I knew, I sensed it. He was different. He was tame again, but... he was different. The monster was still sitting there, waiting inside of him."

She holds the bottle to her chest, to her heart. Her eyes are closed, silent tears streaming down her face. Like rivers.

"I'm so sorry," she says. "So sorry," she mumbles.

With shaking hands, her eyes still closed, she places the bottle on the table.

.

Slowly, color is seeping into the sky. Purple and pink and red and yellow, like something is burning behind the cover of clouds. And Dean supposes that something is, because day is coming now.

"Has to be cast at midnight, huh?" he says. "Figures."

"At least we have everything we need." Sam says.

In a bag in the backseat is the green bottle with the two twigs and the tiny, crumpled thing. Next to the bottle is the hair pin that Sandra Patrikson was given by her brother as a child, which was then carried for over forty years by the brook horse she had called "Vattne."

"What do you think she will do now?"

"Who? The old lady?"

"Yeah."

Dean shrugs.

"Hopefully live a long life and not go senile so she can forget the kids that she's responsible for killing."

"Dean."

"What, you think she's not responsible?"

"I think that he was everything to her. She had to believe he could be saved."

"She put herself before the lives of those kids, when she should have put an end to him. If that had been me, I would have..."

But he doesn't keep going. Squeezing the steering wheel, he focuses his eyes on the headlights.

Sam doesn't say anything.

Around them cars fly down the road with men and women on their way to work. Children walk on the sidewalk, alone, in groups or hand in hand, in pairs; yellow, artificial street light shining down on them.

.

The motel lobby is empty and silent. If Gustaf Jonason is here − and he should be, having left the farm before Sam, Dean and Sandra Patrikson left – there is no sign of him. A few lights are on, but there are more shadows. From the wall above the reception desk, a dark, horned head smiles down on them. Dean doesn't smile back.

He opens the door to their room, enters, and drops down on his bed. Sam goes in after him, sitting down on his own checkered bedspread. He sits silent, running a hand through his hair.

"Are we going to talk about the rest?" he asks.

"About what?" Dean asks, not looking at him.

"The demons?"

"What's there to talk about? It explains everything. How it got loose, why it didn't run off to Sweden when it did. Demons could pull that, easily. We always knew that someone could have done this on purpose."

"You know what I mean. Demons mean this has to be a seal."

"Right."

"So... why didn't Cas mention it?"

Dean opens his eyes, but he's got his back to Sam; all he sees is the window with the splendid "view" over Joe's Lake Preserve. From Dean's position on the bed, all he sees is a slowly coloring map of clouds.

"How should I know?" he says, shrugging. "Because he's a dick?"

There is a moment of silence; then Sam sighs softly. Dean hears him pull off his boots.

.

Their sleep is restless, dreams ranging from facelessly uncomfortable to Hellish nightmare. Sam awakes with Ruby nestled in his thoughts and Dean awakes reaching for a drink. They take turns in the shower; there is no hurry. Midnight won't come faster because they want it to.

As the sun wanders across a cloudless blue sky, letting one of its rays make a visiting caress over Dean's bed and the floor, they have breakfast and make plans for the rest of the day and the night that will come. Not very many preparations are needed, but there are a few. They must find a suitable kind of water, some bottled kind most likely, and they must prepare the bottle with it and the other ingredients. Then they must drill a hole in the ice, because at midnight they will be dropping the green bottle into the Rum River and banishing the brook horse from its waters.

That is, if Sandra Patrikson's old Swedish wise man knew what he was talking about when he put the spell together. That's another thing they want to do before it's time: take a closer look at the spell and its various components and see if it makes any sense.

The twigs in the bottle turn out to be maple and poplar.

"But not the kind we usually find here," Sam says. "Could be Scandinavian. The lore available on the magical properties of wood is..."

"...a mess, I know," Dean mutters, twiddling the poplar twig.

"Still, if you look at the more reliable sources, there are properties to these types of wood that would make sense with what the spell is supposed to do and how it's been put together: moving, banishment, water."

"Alright then," Dean nods. "What about the lizard tail?"

He picks up the third, crumpled item that the bottle had contained and examines it.

"It looks kind of... odd?" He looks at Sam.

"Actually, I think that's a tail and body, with the legs and head cut off."

Dean makes a face and Sam takes the dried body from him.

"It could be a salamander. They're not uncommon spell ingredients and seeing as it's a water creature... The rest of the components make sense too. Hair from the brook horse, the pin that tamed it, water not from the water it currently inhabits."

"And drop it all into the river at midnight," Dean finishes. "''Til water's stain, it will remain'."

Sam nods.

"So all we need is to get our hands on some water that's not from around here. Shouldn't be too difficult."

"No," Sam agrees. "And we need to decide on a location. Where to drop the bottle."

"Right. Well, you do that," Dean says and gets up. "I'm going for a drive."

He doesn't look at Sam, just fishes out the keys and grabs his jacket and heads for the door.

"Okay," Sam says.

Dean leaves the motel room and the door closes behind him.

.

The bar he finds is a bright place with a soft friendly bustle and only a few patrons. Dean sits down on one of the high chairs and says 'beer' when the man behind the counter asks 'what can I get you?' The man tries the small talk, but quickly gets that Dean isn't interested and goes back to toweling glasses. An older waitress, weary-looking but still smiling, is wiping off tables and makes careful arrangements with the napkins and salt and pepper.

There is another guy sitting a few chairs away, big guy in a suit that looks thrown on in a hurry. He's got several shot glasses lined up and is halfway through them, weighing one in his hand before throwing his head back, emptying it. On the far end of the bar sits a woman, even older than the waitress. The glass she cradles is empty and she sways, leaning over to look at Dean with a smile and a bedroom squint to her heavily painted eyes. Dean clears his throat and looks the other way. No.

He's half-way through his beer when the door opens, hitting a small bell that rings.

"Ah, Julia," the man behind the counter says.

"Hey, Alan!" the newcomer says and Dean realizes that he knows that voice.

He turns in his chair and stable manager Julia Nilson-Brody enters the bar, carrying a package marked fragile. Her cheeks are red from the cold, but she doesn't look bothered in the least.

"Finally, huh?" the man Alan says, putting away the towel.

"Finally!" Julia agrees, smiling that gorgeous smile, handing him the package over counter. "They might be able to make nice things, but can they make them on time?"

"Too much to ask, I guess."

"Apparently!" She laughs.

Her eyes scan the room casually, but when she sees Dean her face lights up with recognition.

"Agent Marklund! You're still here."

"Still here," Dean says, throwing out an arm to gesture how here he is.

"I thought you guys had left already. Your partner told me you needed to move the horse?"

"Yeah, yeah. Just need to tie up some things first."

"More secret stuff?"

"More secret stuff."

It's only early afternoon and Julia's not dressed up. Her jacket is thick, to keep her warm rather than show off her body; her blonde hair is tied up casually with escaped strands of hair framing her face, ears sticking out red under a woolen cap; gloves on her hands. She's not there to be gorgeous, but she is. He loves her red cheeks.

They look at each other and she nods slowly, smiling, biting her lip.

"Mind if... I sit down?"

Smiling too, Dean raises his brows.

"What?" she laughs. "No one ever tries to pick you up?"

"No, no, it happens."

He chuckles and she does too, sitting down on the chair next to his.

"I like to not wait for the guy to make a move." she says, ordering a beer for herself. "I know some people say that it's not... what, lady-like? But I know what I want and I see nothing wrong with that. Just tell me to stop if I go too far."

She takes a swig of beer, some foam gathering on her upper lip. Somehow Dean finds it highly unlikely that she is kept waiting very often, or that many say stop.

"Nilson..." he says. "That's Swedish, isn't it?"

"My mother's side," she says. "Why?"

He shakes his head. They are both smiling.

.

Her curves are smooth and her skin is soft. She is warm, the winter clinging to her face a sharp contrast to the rest of her.

He likes her hands, palms rough from years of work outside. Definitely a woman's hands, but... She's got strong legs too. Rider's legs; he remembers them from other girls. The calloused hands too he remembers.

As the afternoon grows older, slowly but steadily, she lies with her head on his chest, hair spilling out over him, released. Tickling his sides. He holds out her palm with one hand, tracing the lines with his thumb.

"You don't have a fetish or something, do you?" she asks, half teasingly. "They're just hands."

"I just like them. They're honest."

She snorts, amused.

"They're guy hands, my friends always say."

He lets her have it back. She shifts, turning over to lie half on him, one strong leg between his.

"Does it have anything to do with this?" she asks, running a finger over the mark on his shoulder. He watches her trace the lines, like he had done. She places her own hand over it, or tries to.

"Bigger than mine," she says quietly and with a small smile she shrugs. Blue eyes meet his and he thinks about Cas.

"Does it hurt?"

He pulls free from her, gently and sits up, reaching for his clothes.

"I'm sorry," she says. "I shouldn't have asked. I can tell that it... means something, to you."

"It's okay. I just need to get back."

She nods.

"It was nice. This."

He looks at her, lying only half covered with blonde hair spilling. She smiles and it's half an apology. And he feels bad.

"It was," he says, hesitating, before leaning over to press a soft kiss to her lips. Blue eyes glitter and something coils inside his belly. He pulls back.

"If you're ever in the neighborhood?"

"Sure," he says.

.

It's snowing. Dean looks up and tiny flecks of snow are coming towards him, landing on his cheeks, his nose, his forehead. He blinks. How long does it take for you to get used to cold like this?

The sky is darkening. The street lights marching down the road are already glowing.

He takes his phone out and calls Sam as he crosses the street to where the car is parked.

"Hey," his brother answers.

"I'm on my way back," he says. "Did you get the water?"

"Yeah. Everything's ready."

"Great. I've been thinking about location, for the spell? I want to do it under the bridge."

"In town?"

"Yeah. Gut feeling."

"Alright," Sam says.

They hang up. Dean starts the car and he's about to turn out onto the road, when he sees Julia come running out of the motel. Distress is clear on her face as she scans the street, looking left and right and then she sees his car. Dean kills the engine and gets out, as she runs across the street.

"Please!" She calls.

"Julia?" He catches her, grabs her shoulders.

"I'm sorry!" she gasps, catching her breath. "I know this isn't... But I don't know what else to do."

"Julia, what's wrong?"

"It's my niece. My... my sister just called. My niece has gone missing."

.

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	14. Pull my silver strings, Baby 13

**The Roman Hunt  
Part 1: Pull my silver strings, Baby  
**by Danny (a.k.a. Mashiro)

Supernatural fandom, series, SPOILERS for season 4  
EVENTUALLY SLASH: Dean/Castiel

Posted: 2013-07-23

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And this will be the last chapter of part 1 of the Roman Hunt. Part 1 is now considered finished. Thank you so much for reading! I hope that you have enjoyed yourself as much as I enjoyed myself writing. Thank you raptorkind for being a wonderful beta and helping me with the details. You're awesome!

As for the other parts, I am fairly sure that part 2, the first part set in season 5 will happen, because I really want to write something with more action, as in the bedroom kind, haha. Unfortunately I don't know when I'll be able to start working on it. We'll see! When it comes however, it will be posted here, so if you follow this story, you won't miss a thing.

Now, enjoy the last chapter and thank you again! Take care of yourself and I wish you many happy days.

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DISCLAIMER: I don't own the rights to the Supernatural series or characters and I make no money writing this. I'm just a fan. This is fan fiction. All OC characters are fictional and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

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**Chapter 12**

**The Brook Horse**

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"Sam! Hey, we've got a problem. Get the stuff and meet me outside, I'll explain later. We need to go now!"

A few minutes later, the motel comes into view and Dean turns with more speed than he should, the tires losing their grip, the car skidding into the parking lot. He gets control back just in time to break as Sam runs up, gets the door open and jumps in.

"What's going on?" he asks, throwing the bag into the backseat, but keeping the green bottle with him.

"There's a girl missing." Dean says, focusing his eyes forward as he turns back out onto the road.

"Since when? You think it's the brook horse?"

"Less than an hour ago. She was out near the river with her mom. Mom blacked out, says she got hit over the head, and when she came to the kid was missing. I... ran into the mom's sister and she told me. Julia. The stable manager?"

"Oh. Right." From his tone, Sam needs no more details to connect the dots. But he's frowning. "That's not like the previous victims at all though."

"Well, maybe it's pissed off! Maybe it knows that we're planning to kill it and it wants to do as much damage as it can before we do. Sam, we need to get this son of a bitch now. Is there any way we can do the spell before midnight?"

"Not... as it is, no. We'd need to adjust the other components and that will take time and probably resources we don't have. And even with that, we can't be sure that it will work."

"We're not sure it works now! There's a kid's life at stake here."

"There will be more lives at stake if we get the spell wrong, Dean. For all we know, that's exactly what it wants. Besides..."

"Besides what?"

Sam sighs.

"If this is the brook horse and it's out to do damage, isn't it more likely that girl is... already dead?"

"She's not dead," Dean says. "It wants us to have a chance to save her."

Sam looks at him.

"It's not like that." Dean snaps, understanding the look; shifting in his seat. "I can't sense it or anything like that. I told you, I'm fine. I just... know what kind of monster this is. It screws with your head, that's what it does. That's what it... likes."

"But you're fine?"

"I'm fine!"

Sam shakes his head. Dean ignores it; says:

"We do what we did when we caught it. I patrol and you stay hidden. It's our best chance."

"And what if that's what it wants? What it's waiting for?"

"That's a risk we have to take."

"Look, I care about this girl as much as you do, but..."

"Really?"

"I care! I'm being realistic, Dean. That spell is our way to stop this thing for good. If it knows that, then we have to assume that it will try to keep us from casting it. We need to look at the bigger picture."

It's Dean who shakes his head this time.

"You know, sometimes I think you should have been buddies with the angels instead of me," he says with a bitter smile. "You'd fit right in."

.

He's standing on the edge where snow becomes snow-covered ice. Before him the river lays quiet, running secretly under its frozen cover. He can imagine it, deep and dark and cold; not quite black, but almost; a deep, deep darkness blue.

Above the sky is still covered with clouds, but they are thinning. Stray stars and the moon sending signs of a clear, cold night. The temperature is dropping. Oh, how he wants to be rid of this place; the cold is seeping into his bones and further inside, into his soul, his heart. And oh, how he wants to stay; forever if he could, in the numbing, distracting cold. Just come in, come in and freeze this heart and let me leave it behind. I've had enough of it now, enough. But that would be mercy, would it not? Reprieve, and he can never ask for that.

The snow is bright white against the shadows. The river lays quiet and still.

Dean doesn't know if he expected someone to come; if, as he stands there, he is not only standing, watching and listening, but waiting. Who knows? He only contemplates it very briefly, before stepping out onto the ice and starting to walk.

.

It's November the 24th, 2008, and Dean Winchester is following the Rum River upstream, north of the State Highway 95 bridge. The snow creaks under his boots and his breath comes in puffs. He is not walking to reach a certain destination, but to patrol the area, to look for signs of the brook horse that has made this river its home or the girl that he believes it has stolen. The girl is called Jenny, Dean has been told by her aunt. She's only five years old and can be so stubborn, but she's such a sweet kid. Please, is there anything, anything that you can do? If Dean had been a bird, he would have been able to search the river in no time at all and do it without drawing any attention. Unfortunately, he is not and Jenny could be anywhere.

The clouds thin out and scatter as night grows older. Above the white winter landscape, a million stars twinkle in bright contrast to the deep darkness of the sky. They almost challenge the moon, they are so bright. And the snow mirrors their brilliance, sparkling all around him. It never gets really dark when the world is covered in snow.

Dean would not compare this place to Heaven, this white winter avenue that he walks, but that is because Dean is Dean and not a twelve year old girl. Dean has actually met angels, who they say will greet you in Heaven. If, of course, you have been good enough to end up there instead of in Hell, which Dean has also actually seen. So no, he does not compare, no matter how brilliantly the snow and the stars sparkle. The brilliance doesn't even register. Dean sees other things; a nightmare memory in misshapen white shrubs, a deathly pale girl in snow drifts, a silver mane spilling from the covered branches of the trees.

He walks fast. The snow creaks.

.

The beginning of the end starts during the last hour of that day; a Monday, as it happens. Dean has seen nothing and heard nothing of the brook horse or the missing girl. He went as far north as they had agreed to, then turned back, knowing full well that him seeing or hearing nothing the first time, didn't mean that there actually was nothing. The brook horse only manifested physically when it wanted to; and stayed spirit when that was more convenient. The girl could be... hidden; put under a spell and hidden somewhere. Or she could be dead. Dean grips the steel-loaded tranquilizer rifle harder. She could be dead.

He looks at his watch, then ahead, towards town and the bridge. Midnight is approaching.

Then he hears a sound and he sees something moving in the corner of his eye. Raising the rifle, he turns fast, seeing a gathering of snow flumping down from a branch. He looks around, scanning the area where the snow had fallen.

"Hey!" he shouts. "Come out here, you son of a bitch!"

That was the snort of a horse he had heard, he is sure, and he can feel the brook horse's presence, it is here. But where? The snow lies white and still, only that branch is waving slowly, a bared limb, beckoning. Narrowing his eyes, he looks further to the left, to the right. He turns. Nothing.

Then he turns again and he sees the little girl. There had been nothing there before, only snow, but now she's lying there, in the middle of the river, flat on her back.

"Jenny!"

Dean makes his way to her, watching the sides for movement or flashes of silver or sounds, knowing, feeling, that the brook horse is there as well. He expects it to charge at him at any moment, but nothing comes.

He calls her name again and kneels at her side, touching his hand to her shoulder, then his fingers to her neck. Her skin is pale and cold, but there is a pulse. He looks around again, scanning the eastern bank, the western bank, upstream and downstream.

"Jenny?"

He grips her shoulder and gives a gentle shake, but the girl is not moving. Jenny wears winter clothing, a thick coat, a big cap, woolly mittens. Red, but the night is making the colors vague. She had been out walking with her mother, Julia had said. Just taking a walk after dinner. Jenny had wanted to see the stars.

Golden curls frame the girl's face. There is a soft whisper of a smile on her lips.

Dean gets up, gripping the rifle hard and turning.

"Let her go!" he calls. "Come out here and let her go!"

Mist forms a way downstream, appearing as if from the air. Dean raises the rifle and aims at the white, the slow, menacing swirling.

Foolish man. Foolish, tormented man-thing.

The "m" in "man-thing" vibrates through Dean and his eyes are tearing, the voice scraping the inside of his mind. The mist takes shape, loosely, then bleeds out of it again, before forming... Dean fires. There is a shudder through the presence, but no damage done, Dean can feel it, can feel amusement. Gritting his teeth, he grabs another dart and reloads. The mist swirls.

"What have you done with her?"

I gave her peace.

"Then you're gonna take it back!" Dean raises the rifle again and there is a rumble of amusement, laughter.

I see into you, man-thing. I see that thing they call a soul. That broken, empty shell you drag in the dirt behind you. Do you know why it hurts so much? Do you know why it torments you so? Because this is not what you are. You are trying to press pitiful concern and foolish care into a place where there is no room for such things. You have been remade, man-thing. It hurts because you deny it.

It takes all his strength of will not to pull the trigger. He squeezes it, feeling the smooth cold, struggling with his own muscles. A ragged breath comes as white. There is cold trailing down his cheeks, his stinging eyes.

"Let her go, you son of a bitch." he presses out through clenched teeth.

The rumbling amusement again, vibrating, blurring his eyes; he blinks. Then what little form there was dissolves. The mist fades out into the air, and is gone. Silence. Crispy cold air and absolute silence.

Rifle raised, Dean spins, looking in all directions, the eastern bank, the western bank, upstream, downstream. He stays close to the girl, right next to her, can sense her form in the vague red coat. His heart is pounding and he struggles to calm his breath. The creature is here, he can feel it. It's so cold, was it this cold before? He dares not look at his watch.

What happens happens fast. Dean feels the presence of the brook horse spike, like a shudder up his spine, but where is it? He moves to turn, and sees the charging swirl of mist, pouring into form and coming straight for them. He fires and then the mist barrels into him, the world a blur of starry heaven and white snow as he is knocked to the ice.

There is a creaky, deep moaning sound, then something sloshes, then a wave of icy cold water comes pouring.

His hand still gripping the rifle, Dean pushes up off the ice in a whirl of snow. The legs of his pants and his shoes are wet, as if he has stepped through a stream. Where the girl had been lying, a body of water is pooling.

"No!"

He falls to his knees where she had lain, wiping at the water and the snow with his hands. The ice is clear, solid; the water soaks his jacket.

The brook horse is there; its presence is returned and it is so pleased, so joyously delighted and Dean squeezes his eyes shut.

But almost immediately after comes the shudder. A cold, deathly shudder through its being and its joy turns to fury, then to horror and a wail of pain pierces the cold, cold night. Dean opens his eyes again and he sees a swirl of mist almost spasm above the ice further downstream. Flames come licking up from inside of it and then, in smoke and wailing... it dissolves. As it vanishes into the air, he can feel the presence of the brook horse go with it.

Lifting his wet arm, cold water dripping from his sleeve, Dean looks at his watch and it is midnight. Midnight.

.

Silence. Dead silence. Dean blinks. He looks at the pooling water and the dark ice that hides under it. In the light of the moon, he thinks he can see; on the other side, below, the swirling red of a coat.

.

It's odd, he can't really feel the cold, even though his wet clothes are freezing around him. Sam calls and with numb fingers Dean answers.

"Dean! Did it work? Is it gone?"

Dean nods, then realizes and says:

"Yeah. Yeah, it worked. It's gone."

.

They get Dean out of the frozen clothes and Sam sits him in the passenger seat, wrapping him in blankets, rubbing Dean's cold hands in his own.

"What did you do?" he says and something in his tone reminds of their mother. "You should have told me you went swimming."

"I'm fine," Dean grimaces and pulls his hands free, rubbing them himself. "Just drive already."

Sam sighs and starts the car.

"There was no sign of the girl?"

"No."

Outside, a world of night and moon and snow flies past them, still, without apologies.

"You were right," Dean says. "She was already dead."

.

His feet feel like he's walking on needles as he makes his way to the shower.

"Go easy on the hot water," Sam calls after him.

Dean turns it on scalding and grits his teeth, squeezes his eyes shut as the water runs down his back, down his useless arms and fingers, over his eyes, over his cheeks. His skin burns, or so it seems to him. He blinks. He breathes.

On the wall, a plastic bear head holds an almost empty roll of toilet paper in its jaws. It's black, with angry yellow eyes. Staring at him.

When he comes out of the bathroom he is wrapped in both steam and towel, hobbling through the room on numb feet, to the fridge, grabbing a beer with stiff fingers. Sam gives him a worried look and a nod, but he's on the phone with Bobby from the sound of it.

Dean sits on the bed and pours the cold down his throat. He breathes. He closes his eyes and opens them again.

He reaches for his pants and a shirt, dressing. Pulling on his jacket, he makes his way to the door.

"I need some air." he says and leaves, ignoring Sam's call after him.

.

He's standing on the edge where snow becomes ice. Before him the frozen, snow-covered pond lays quiet, its water pooling secretly under cover. He can imagine it, deep and dark and cold; not quite black, but almost; a deep, deep darkness blue.

Morning is coming; it's like he can feel it, a silent rumbling pushing closer and closer. The day that follows me will be glorious, it promises. Not a cloud in the sky and the sun burning more brightly than you have ever seen it, just you wait. The children will play, basking in the light with red wooly mittens and throw sparkling snow at their laughing friends or brothers. Can you see it? Can you see them?

But for a moment still, the darkness has claim. The pond lays frozen, quiet and unmoving.

Dean doesn't know if he really expected someone to come; if, as he stands there, he is not only standing, watching and listening, but waiting. Who knows? He only contemplates it very briefly, as he becomes aware of the presence of the other. He doesn't turn around.

"This was another test, wasn't it?" he says.

The snow creaks behind him; footsteps, coming closer.

"Were there even any demons in Glacier?"

"There were." Cas says and stops, right in the corner of Dean's eye. "This was not a test."

"But this was a seal. This job here, right? Demons freed that brook horse."

"Dean, it's not what you think. This seal... it had already been broken when you came here."

Dean turns to him then, frowning; Cas is looking out over the river, pain in his eyes.

"We lost here when the first child drowned and wept in death. We... tried. But we were too late."

"So... you just left? You knew that that thing was still out here, hunting these kids, and you left?"

"I was not here. I was not..."

Cas' hands are tightened to fists.

"We are to stop the seals from breaking. That is our work, our 'job'." He says it in a way that has Dean thinking of Sam and hunting ghosts, the family business. "And when we can't... When we fail... There are other battles, so many... other battles, I... We..." He slowly uncurls his fingers, mechanically, as if willing the tension to release.

Dean looks out over the river and he thinks about Cas' confession that time in the playground. He thinks about doubt. He thinks about what Anna had told him about orders and faith and obedience.

"Did you know how I could stop it?" he asks.

"No. I told you everything I knew."

Dean nods. Cas turns to him and looks at him, in that way he looks, with the fullest attention. He says:

"It was not my decision to ask you for assistance, to ask you to leave this place. I was... I am... relieved, that you chose to stay."

And Dean looks back at him and for a long time, they look at each other.

Then Dean looks away, up, at the sky that will soon slowly color and grow less dark, and he knows. He knows that when he comes back down, the angel will be gone.

.

.


End file.
